Chapter Text
Jisung must be going insane.
It’s the only reasonable explanation. Jisung swears he threw these books on the shelf haphazardly, but they now sit perfectly placed in alphabetical order. If this were the only incident, he wouldn’t jump to insanity this quickly, but this isn’t the first odd thing that has happened in the short month he’s lived here.
Everything was perfectly normal at first.
The fall semester was about to start, and Jisung was dreading having to live in a dorm again. He was desperate to find something else.
After his online apartment search was unsuccessful, he had called the two people he knew who had already escaped the hell of on-campus living.
“Pleeeaaasseee,” Jisung begged into the receiver.
“You know we would let you move in if we could, but we’re only halfway through our lease, and we only have 2 rooms. Unless you want to live in our living room, there’s just no way you can move in with us.” Chan explained in an overly kind tone, clearly feeling bad about Jisung’s situation.
“What happened to wanting the ‘Full college experience’?” Jisung could practically hear Changbin throwing up air quotes, throwing Jisung’s words, from only a year ago, back at him. His two childhood friends had wanted Jisung to move in with them, but he insisted on ‘dorming it’ for at least his first year.
“Yeah, but that was before I found out the ‘full college experience’ was not actually the perfect dream movies made it out to be.” Jisung groaned. Chan and Changbin already knew all of Jisung’s on-campus living woes. They had gotten front row seats to his rants all year long.
Nothing about the experience was good: dining hall food; abysmal. The laundry rooms: annoying. Communal bathrooms: disgusting. Worst of all, the tiny ass dorms you had to share with someone you didn’t know: hell.
Jisung had learned the hard way that living with a stranger was less likely to lead to a lifelong best friend and more likely to lead to a lifelong enemy. His roommate had been a slob and an asshole. Refusing to clean his side of the room even when he could see mold forming on his roommate’s desk, covered with unwashed Tupperware, but had the audacity to scream at Jisung if even a t-shirt on the floor crossed into his territory.
When he finally moved out of the dorm, Jisung swore he would find a way to never have to deal with that again.
“We tried to warn you,” Chan sighed, then turned, “He always insists on learning the hard way.”
“And yet he never learns,” Changbin sighed in agreement.
“Hey!” Jisung complained, only to be met with laughter.
“Dude, you have plenty of money, just get a place to yourself.” Jisung heard Changbin call from the background.
“Tried that. Nothing online is in my budget or available.” He groaned, “Im gonna have to get another horrible assigned roommate, aren’t I?”
“Have you tried looking for a place on foot?” Chan suggested, “We found this place before they even listed it online.” It wasn’t a bad idea, and Jisung began to find himself on frequent walks around campus looking for ‘for rent’ signs.
It was during one of these walks that he stumbled upon this cute little house for rent on the edge of campus. Dirt cheap, at least compared to everything else he could find, so he contacted the landlord asking to move in without even getting a tour.
A mistake for sure. Though he’s not sure a tour would have warned him of this situation.
Everything about the house itself is perfect. A single bedroom, a finished basement, 2 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, though he wasn’t sure he would ever use it for anything more than its microwave, and a backyard that he was excited to host parties in.
An incredibly lucky find. At least it was, for about a week. It wasn’t long into the second week when he started hearing things. It started with some creaks, but the house was kinda old, so that was to be expected, but not long after that, he swore he heard things move or doors opening and closing on their own. He chalked it all up to the weather cooling down and the house adjusting along with it.
Though he swore he once heard footsteps walking down the hall.
It wasn’t long after that when he started to catch something out of the corner of his eye. Bolting up regularly to try and find whatever he was seeing to no avail. After a solid week, he resorted to ignoring it despite its near-constant existence at the edge of his vision.
Then, a few days later, he came home from class to find his TV on. A new TV that had been delivered to him that morning, and he was sure he hadn’t even plugged it in yet, and was even more certain he had not turned it on.
He chalked the whole thing up to the late-night writing the night before, which had affected his sleep and, therefore, his memory. Yeah, that was definitely it.
Two days ago, he woke up from a particularly terrifying nightmare to find a glass of water on his nightstand. A glass of water, he’s sure he didn’t get himself, but his very parched throat was very glad to have it in that moment. He had actually gone to bed early that night, so it couldn’t have been lack of sleep.
Maybe he was sleepwalking? Yep, sleepwalking. That was the answer.
And now the bookshelf.
“Did you do this?” He finally asks Hyunjin across the room, lounging on Jisung’s newly purchased couch.
Hyunjin looks up inquisitively. “Didn’t you put those on the shelf yourself, like, an hour ago?”
“I did — but they weren’t organized.”
Hyunjin squints at the shelf and then shrugs, “Well, it wasn’t me.” He turns back to his phone, “Maybe the ghost was a maid when she was alive.”
A ghost. Hyunjin’s crazy theory for all the weird occurrences.
When Jisung moved in, Hyunjin was the first in the neighborhood to introduce himself, knocking on Jisung’s door late into the day, once his friends had left and the boxes were left scattered around the house.
He opened the door expecting someone to be back for something they had left, but was shocked to see a stranger on his doorstep.
After introductions and Hyunjin explaining that he was Jisung’s new next-door neighbor, his first question was, “Have you seen the ghost?” Jisung was taken aback. He had not.
Hyunjin had been disappointed to hear. When he met the previous tenants, they had casually mentioned weird things happening in the house, and within 2 months, they broke their lease and had to pay a hefty fee to get out quickly. He’s convinced they saw a ghost and bolted.
Jisung doesn’t agree.
It could have been anything: a family emergency, getting a new job across the country, etc., etc. The two of them ended up bickering and gabbing back and forth on Jisung’s porch for almost an hour, becoming fast friends, hence Hyunjin sprawled out on his couch now.
Jisung looks back at the shelf, now, still wary of his memory. Maybe he had organized them in his unpacking haze and just not realized it.
Being a life-long sceptic, Jisung found it much easier and plausible to come up with logical explanations for each odd event rather than attributing them all to a ghost. Even if the best explanation he could come up with was to assume he was losing his memory.
There was nothing logical about believing in the supernatural. They’re just make-believe entities meant to scare kids and the occasional 23-year-old who made the mistake of watching paranormal activity late one night in his, decidedly not, haunted house.
Also, what kind of supernatural being would care to take the time to organize a shelf of books? A ghost is obviously not the answer.
Tired and still confused, Jisung decided to call the day’s unpacking done.
It’s been just over a month, but he swears the unpacked boxes keep appearing. Maybe that’s the not-ghosts’ fault too.
“I have leftover pizza from the other night. You want that for dinner?” Jisung calls over his shoulder. Hyunjin agrees enthusiastically. “I’ll go heat it up.”
“Thank you, babe,” Hyunjin jokingly calls after him, still sprawled on the couch, not even attempting to move.
Jisung quickly repacks the still half-full box and shoves it to the corner before wandering over to the fridge and finding the pizza box. It’s a big box, but he’d managed to shove it in the bottom, as far back as it could go, and it takes him a minute to squat down and dig it out.
The box catches on the shelf above as he tries to stand up with it, and he starts to fall. Jisung is nothing if not a giant klutz, so already knowing his fate, he braces for an impact that never comes.
Instead, a cold touch on his shoulder steadies him. He jumps slightly at the feeling but thankfully avoids whacking his arm on the fridge door, dropping the pizza box, or falling over.
He whips his head around to try to find whatever it was that just saved him, and a shiver runs down his back as he sees that nothing is there.
Physically feeling something is new.
It was probably a burst of cold from the AC, and it was just conveniently timed with him catching himself.
Yeah, that was it.
---
“I’ll give ya the tour, and then we can get to work,” Jisung grins.
Even though Chan and Changbin had helped him move in only weeks prior, neither of them seems to mind as Jisung drags them from room to room to show off his new place.
With all three of them in the thick of classes, this was the first time this semester they all had a free day to get together and work on their music. Jisung had jumped at the opportunity to host at his new house rather than spend another evening slowly sinking into Chan and Changbin’s one-million-year-old couch.
They make their way through the house with Jisung dramatically showing off his home decorating skills, or lack thereof, and end their journey in his basement.
“— and there was a spare side room down here, so,” Jisung slides over towards a door along the wall and dramatically flings it open, “I turned it into a makeshift studio.” He presents proudly.
The small side room was most likely meant for storage, but it’s carpeted like the rest of the basement, and has no windows, so it’s much better for acoustics. Jisung had dragged his handful of recording and mixing equipment down and found a cheap desk to put them on. Before they had even arrived, he brought down two of his dining room chairs so they all had a place to sit when they inevitably worked down here.
Someday, when he has money to blow, Jisung would love to have a full in-house studio so he doesn’t have to rent a space and can just work in his pajamas. This isn’t exactly what he had in mind, but it’s a pretty decent first step.
Changbin and Chan both peak in. “Oh, this is perfect,” Changbin grins, admiring the room before heading to the beanbag Jisung stuck in the corner. Chan immediately takes Jisung’s nice office chair, and Jisung is so excited to get to work that he doesn’t even mind sitting on a dining room chair.
There’s a real eagerness among all three of them as they quickly get set up and pull out all their notes to get to work.
An hour passes in no time. They’ve gotten the lyrics and starting composition almost complete, and Changbin and Jisung are eager to start recording, letting Chan mull over the last bits of the lyrics they have to iron out.
It’s halfway through recording when something catches Changbin’s eye, and he visibly jumps and stumbles over his words.
“You good?” Jisung asks, it’s not often he sees Changbin just stop mid-recording.
“Yeah, yeah.” Changbin shakes his head like he’s clearing a thought, “Let’s just start from the beginning again.”
Jisung, in charge of the computer, restarts the track and presses the record button. There’s a measure, and Changbin starts before once again stumbling over his words and then glaring at the corner of the room. Jisung looks over to where Changbin keeps looking, then at him inquisitively, not sure what’s wrong.
Changbin rips his headphones off, frustrated. “Okay, I’m gonna sound crazy asking this, but do you guys keep seeing — like, something moving in the corner?” Changbin points at the corner where Jisung has, in fact, been catching something out of the corner of his eye.
Chan just nods, but is jotting something down and doesn’t even look up.
“Oh, that? Yeah, happens all the time. That’s just one of the quirks of the place.” Jisung shrugs. At this point, he’s become an expert at ignoring and dismissing the strange happenings around the house. It’s not like he can do anything about it.
Changbin looks at him skeptically, “Thats what someone says about a draft or a creak. Not seeing things.”
“I don’t know what to tell ya, man. It’s just the house.” Jisung shrugs. Changbin looks skeptically at the corner and then back at Jisung.
“That’s not *just the house*.” Changbin throws up some exaggerated air quotes.
“It’s just in our heads.” Jisung dismisses adjusting his argument.
“Your place is haunted.” Chan cuts in, seeming deeply unfazed by his own suggestion, still not looking up from his notebook as he continues to scribble.
“What?” Jisung sputters as if this is the first time he’s hearing this theory. “It’s not haunted.”
“No, I think he’s on to something.” Changbin agrees jokingly, “Unless we’re having connected hallucinations, why would you and I both be seeing things?”
“Make that all three of us.” Chan chimes in unhelpfully.
“Haunted? Really?” Jisung groans, “Do you hear yourselves? This isn’t some silly horror movie; this is real life. Ghosts aren’t real. There’s some logical explanation for that.” Jisung points at the currently empty corner.
Chan quirks an eyebrow. “Such as?” Jisung is quiet.
“Go on, we’re all ears.” Changbin challenges, knowing damn well Jisung is gonna have to BS his way through an explanation.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s just the ventilation?” Jisung supplies.
“The ventilation?” Chan questions as he finally looks up from his notebook to look at Jisung flatly.
“Maybe when it turns on, it’s kicking up dust and thats what we’re seeing.” His two friends look unconvinced. “It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“I really don’t think thats how that works.” Changbin remarks.
“And you think a ghost makes more sense?” Jisung counters.
“Yes,” They say in unison.
“My neighbor’s house was haunted growing up.” Changbin explains, “The ghost of her dead dad stuck around cause he didn’t like her new husband.”
“What? Thats nonsense.” Jisung dismisses, even though he’s pretty sure he’s heard this story from Changbin before.
“No, no, it was real. Her husband’s things kept disappearing or getting mysteriously broken, and the husband accused her. Ended in a divorce. After that, the weird occurrences finally stopped. Her father hated him, so he must have come back to torment him till he left. Unfinished business and all that.” Changbin waves his hand around as if that explains it all.
Jisung gives him a deadpan look, like he doesn’t believe it, but if he were honest with himself, he’d admit he was concerned about what his friends were suggesting.
He hadn’t agreed with Hyunjin, partially because he didn’t believe in all that, but mostly because Hyunjin hadn’t experienced anything or even been in the house yet when he first suggested his outlandish theory. But now, now Jisung had two other people who were also seeing something and coming to the same conclusion.
“Did you piss off someone who died recently?” Chan asks, pulling Jisung out of his train of thought.
“Not that I know of?” Jisung thinks and then shakes his head. “Why are we even entertaining this? You two are just seeing things,” He grumbles, sounding like he’s convincing himself more than his friends.
His two friends glance at each other. “Any other weird occurrences? Ya know, outside whatever’s in the corner.” Changbin asks.
Jisung pauses, “Nothing…major.” He adds the second half in a whisper.
“What is *nothing major* to you?” Changbin asks sarcastically.
“It’s nothing, really. Things are moving once in a while, but that’s probably just me forgetting I put them there. My TV turns on a lot, but I think that’s an electrical problem, and I sometimes walk through cold spots,” as if on cue, he feels the cold chill at the back of his neck again and shivers. “but thats gotta be the air conditioning.”
As he lists things off, his friend’s eyes get bigger and bigger.
When they’re all listed out like that, it’s harder to chalk them up to quirks of the house. They sound more like a bingo board of tropes you would see in a ghost hunters show.
“It’s nothing,” Jisung brushes off, trying to get them back to recording, so he could continue to ignore whatever was going on with his house, but Changbin and Chan are not letting it go.
“That is not ‘nothing’, Jisung,” Chan disagrees, clearly a shift in his demeanor from joking to dead serious.
“Okay, but like it’s fine. Nothing I can’t handle.” Jisung just wants to change the subject, cause the more they argue, the harder it is for him to ignore the signs that his house might actually be haunted.
“Aren’t you worried that things might escalate?” Chan asks, looking genuinely concerned.
“Things will not escalate,” He groans exasperatedly, shifting his worry about the situation to frustration towards the accusations.
“You don’t know that —” Chan starts.
“My house is not haunted,” Jisung practically yells. “It’s just an old house —”
He means to continue his argument, but he sees Chan’s eyes go wide as he watches something behind him. Jisung pauses and turns around to see what caught his friends’ attention.
Across the room, far out of any of the 3 mens reach, a framed photo on the wall suddenly moves and slides along the edge of the frame till it tilts over and thuds to the ground.
All three men freeze. All of them, locked in on the photo now face down on the carpet.
“Dude, what the fuck,” he hears Changbin mutter under his breath.
“Ventilation?” Jisung whispers.
There’s a pause for a moment. Then, the frame to its right slowly does the same, sliding slowly off the hook and then thumping to the floor below.
They all watch, frozen. “Okay, not the ventilation.” There’s a moment of silence, waiting for more of the photos to move, but they don’t.
All three of them sit frozen, unsure what to even do.
Chan finally breaks, “We need to get the fuck out of here,” he says as he grabs his bag, and the other two frantically nod in agreement before packing up their stuff and booking it out of the makeshift studio.
As they run out, Jisung locks the door from the outside, though he doubts a locked door would do much against a ghost.
He swears he hears some laughter coming from inside the office. Admittedly, the laughter didn’t sound evil or malicious and actually sounded quite goofy and sweet, but he doesn’t dare look back in to check for fear of what he would find.
They book it back upstairs, not looking back till they make it to the backyard, where Jisung set up a fire pit and a couple of beat-up lawn chairs. They all collapse into the chairs and take a minute to catch their breath.
“Dude, your place is haunted,” Chan repeats, looking at Jisung, who sighs, not having it in him to argue anymore.
“Most definitely haunted.” Changbin agrees
“Okay, maybe it’s haunted,” He finally agrees.
After a beat, Changbin asks, “What are you gonna do?”
Jisung shrugs, defeated. “I don’t know. Just deal with it, I guess.”
“Deal with it?” Changbin practically yells, “Dude, you gotta move out or get rid of it or— or —or something! You can’t just ignore that.”
“Why not. I mean, it seems harmless. I’ve been here a whole month, and what we just witnessed was the worst it’s done.” Jisung reasons
“Yeah? Well then, it’s getting stronger. Maybe it will do more and more as time goes on. Who knows what it will do next?” Changbin shutters and then gasps, “What if it suddenly decides to murder you. We can’t bear to lose you.” Changbin drapes a hand over his forehead and collapses into the lawn chair dramatically
Jisung rolls his eyes, “Ah, yes, it’s gonna murder me by knocking all my photos off the wall slowly over the course of a year, driving me to insanity, and I will die.”
“You don’t know what it’s capable of or what it wants,” Chan asserts, deadly serious.
“Plus, isn’t it weird knowing something in your home could just be watching you at all times, thats creepy.” Changbin shivers
Jisung ponders Changbin’s comment. Just now coming to terms with something being in his home, he hadn’t really rationalized that the ghost could perceive him.
If it could perceive him, what has it seen? He starts overthinking every single thing he’s done over the past month. Every time he’s washed the dishes, singing along to the radio. The one time he attempted yoga and failed miserably. God, has it seen him trip over his own feet multiple times. What if it’s seen him pick his nose? What if he’s seen him naked?
He groans, “Fine, you’re right, but like what can I even do about it? My lease isn’t up for a whole year, and I doubt a couple of photos falling off the wall is grounds to break the lease,” he grumbles, “I’m not exactly a ghost whisperer. Idk how to get it to leave.”
“I know someone who might be able to help you,” Chan offers.
---
Jisung is woken prematurely by a knock at his door.
Chan knows a guy who he swears can see ghosts and spirits or whatever. Thought he might be able to help Jisung with his situation.
Jisung thought the suggestion that someone could see ghosts was beyond crazy. He just came to terms with the fact that ghosts are maybe real and haunting his house. Despite his scepticism, Changbin made Jisung contact Chan’s clairvoyant friend before the two of them would even consider going home.
The friend seemed nice over text and promised to stop by to check things out the next day.
Jisung was a little relieved he’d get this problem addressed quickly, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t a little hard to fall asleep that night, with the fear that he wasn’t alone in his room. After hours of restlessness and frantically checking every time he heard even a tiny creak, exhaustion finally won, and he fell asleep.
Currently, his unrestful sleep was being rudely interrupted by whoever was at his door. He barely even registers the knock as he rolls over to fall back asleep.
There’s a second, louder knock, and Jisung finally wakes up enough to roll out of bed.
He takes a quick look in his entryway mirror, bags under his eyes, and bedhead looking back at him. He quickly brushes through his hair with his fingers and decides he looks presentable enough before swinging open the door.
The guy on the other side of the door is a blond man, casually dressed in baggy Cargo Shorts, a t-shirt, and a backpack slung over his shoulder.
The mystery man smiles way too brightly for this early in the morning. “Sorry, hope I didn’t wake you up, I’m Felix.” The look of confusion on Jisung’s face must be apparent because he follows up with “Your Jisung, right? We talked yesterday, something about a ghost.”
The confusion doesn’t leave Jisung’s face. “You don’t look like you can see ghosts.” A bit blunter than he intended, but he’s still half asleep, so he can’t help it.
The other man laughs lightly, “Is that so? What’s someone who can see ghosts supposed to look like?” Felix questions in a joking defense.
“Oh, I guess I don’t know,” Jisung mutters, embarrassed.
“If you were expecting the classic woo-woo look, you should have called my sister. She’s a lot more into the family business than I am.” He explains, “Can I come in?”
Jisung steps aside and lets Felix in, closing the door behind him. “Family business?”
“Oh yeah, sorry, figured Chan would have told you. My whole family has this ability to see into the beyond and such. You can pay them to commune with the dead and help loved ones move on and such.” Felix explains, kicking off his shoes and assessing his surroundings.
“They do? You’re not part of the family business?” Jisung asks, genuinely curious.
“Nah. I was never really good at it.” Felix shrugs.
“But you *can* see them, right?” Jisung is still pretty skeptical about the whole thing. Hearing this guy admits he’s not good doesn’t exactly help his ‘this is all a sham ’-o meter, but honestly, the bright, bubbly seeming guy standing in his entryway is the last person Jisung would expect to be a scammer.
Felix laughs, “Yeah, yeah, no worries, I can still tell ya if there’s something here.” Jisung frowns, still not fully convinced.
“You a skeptic?” Felix asks, seeming to clock Jisung quickly.
“I mean… yeah. Sorry,” Jisung mumbles.
“Nah, Nah, no need to apologize. Lots of people are. I don’t take it personally,” Felix waves off. “Ghosts and spirits are actually pretty rare and hard to document. Most people will never encounter one, so it makes sense not to believe they exist.”
“Oh, interesting.” Jisung nods but isn’t doing a good job of hiding his still lingering skepticism that Felix still clearly notices.
“Believe me, don’t believe me, whatever, it’s cool, but it sounds like you have a situation on your hands, so it’s in your best interest to at least humor me.” Felix looks, thankfully, unbothered. If he is truthful about his abilities, he’s probably had to deal with a great deal of skeptics over the years.
“Sorry, it’s not that you seem untrustworthy or, like, you would lie to me,” Jisung says earnestly. Genuinely, this guy seems sweet. In any other circumstance, Jisung cannot see this guy being anything but trustworthy. “It’s just— as far as I was concerned, Ghosts aren’t real, but I really can’t explain what happened yesterday, so…” He trails off.
Felix laughs, “Yeah, if what you said happened, happened, I think you’re probably dealing with some ghost or something.” Jisung feels his stomach drop. There’s still a part of him that wants to have a non-ghost-related explanation for what happened, but the less and less that seems likely.
Felix’s eye catches on a spot in the room, but he turns back to Jisung before he can ask about it. “Now, enough chit-chat, show me the scene of the crime.”
Jisung sheepishly brings Felix down to his makeshift studio, and Felix grins, looking at the equipment. “I see why you and Chan are friends,” he quips. Jisung laughs and points out the face-down picture frames that had moved by themselves the day before.
Felix examines them quickly before gesturing to move on, and Jisung takes him through his house while Felix looks around, taking mental notes and occasionally complimenting Jisung’s decor. The more they walk around, and Jisung points out spots where weird things have happened, the more Jisung can feel himself worrying until he can physically feel the tension in his chest.
It is a long and rather concerning list of occurrences when you list them all out, and they had been getting worse and more frequent. It’s honestly embarrassing how long Jisung was unwilling to admit something weird was going on, even with his level of skepticism.
As Felix looks around, Jisung is too afraid to ask whether he is sensing anything, and Felix doesn’t offer any hints or clues about what he might or might not be seeing.
They finish up in the living room, and Jisung slumps into the couch. Felix flops down in the chair next to him, and they sit in silence for a minute as Felix once again seems to be looking at something in the room. “I’m afraid to ask—” Jisung groans, “Is my house haunted?”
Felix turns back to him with a bit of a smirk gracing his lips, “I wouldn’t use the word ‘haunted’ cause he seems friendly, but yeah, you got a ghost,” Felix replies casually as if he just told Jisung the time, not that Jisung’s fears were true.
“What? Where is it? What does it want?” Jisung asks, looking frantic, like it might pop up any second.
“Oh, he’s right there. He followed us the whole time,” Felix explains casually, then turns to an empty spot about two feet to Jisung’s right, “Hey buddy, sorry I should have acknowledged you when I first saw you in the entryway, but I didn’t want to freak this guy out before he gave me the whole tour.”
Jisung freezes and casts a glance over, even though the spot is still empty.
“See, like that,” Felix points at Jisung while talking to the ghost, “Wanted to make sure it was just you around here.”
Jisung is stuck between looking at Felix and the empty spot, unsure what to say, and moderately terrified.
Felix continues to address the empty spot in the room, but looks a bit confused and frustrated. “Im really sorry, dude, I can’t actually see you or hear you. Im only really seeing the form of you, so if you’re trying to communicate, I’m really not gonna be much help.”
That gets Jisung’s attention, finally pulling him out of his frozen state, “You can’t talk to it?”
Felix shrugs, “As I said, I’m not exactly great at this stuff. I have the touch of an ability, but it’s honestly rare for me to be able to 100% see or understand the things I can see.”
“But you can still help me— get rid of it, right?” Jisung asks sheepishly, feeling a bit mean asking in front of the being itself.
“That seems a little rude. He was here first.” Felix scrutinizes, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks over, and the being must be doing something, cause Felix adds, “I think he agrees with me.” He gestures to the thing Jisung can’t even see.
“Sorry,” Jisung addresses the empty spot, feeling a bit ridiculous doing so, before turning back to Felix, “but he’s messing with my stuff, and he’s making noises, and he’s, ya know, haunting the house.”
“That barely sounds like a haunting, more like mild inconveniences.” Felix frowns. “I mean, didn’t you say he organized your stuff?”
Jisung pauses. If he’s honest with himself, nothing the ghost has done has been that detrimental, just weird and annoying at worst. “Yeah…so, no, it’s not really haunting but still.”
“Why do you want to get rid of him then?” Felix asks, like Jisung is suggesting something insane.
He gestures at the empty spot like it might help convince Felix, “I don’t know why it’s here or what it wants. What if it wants to kill me?”
“If he wanted to kill you, which by the way, that’s rarely a ghost’s intention, he would have done way scarier things by this point,” Felix explains, “You know, like try to kill you.”
Jisung thinks about it, and it makes sense. Honestly, the ghost has done the opposite of things to try to kill him and actually prevented him from hurting himself on multiple occasions.
“Okay, well, if he doesn’t want to kill me, then what does he want?” Jisung asks side defensively eyeing the spot the being is.
“He probably wants what every ghost wants, to move on,” Felix states, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Jisung nods, makes sense. It’s what most ghosts in media want to. Makes him wonder how much of the media’s depiction of ghosts comes from real-life information and which is made up. “Okay, so how can it do that?”
“Not sure. Would be easier if I could talk to him,” Felix frowns, looking like he’s thinking hard.
Jisung frowns and deflates a little as they’re back at square one, “Yeah, pretty sure a lot of this would be easier if you could talk to him.” He grumbles mostly to himself
Felix gives him a dirty look. “Trying my best here. At least you know you have a ghost now,” he snaps.
Jisung softens, “Sorry, yeah, I know I just—” He just wants to be done with this problem, find an easy solution to get rid of this being who’s residing in his home, but he feels mean saying that out loud to said problem and the man who can’t really get him his solution. “Is there a workaround, like a way we can talk to him, like an Ouija board?”
“First off, Ouija boards are stupid. They *sometimes* work, but they’re difficult for ghosts to use most of the time, and they were entirely created for profit, so on principle alone I refuse to use them.” Felix states, “But there might be some ways we can get to talk to him or at least get some information.”
That gets Jisung’s attention, and he sits up excitedly, “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Calm down, I said *might.* Neither of these guarantees that we can talk to him, and certainly doesn’t guarantee getting rid of him, as you so kindly put it.” Felix states backhandedly, and Jisung nods, embarrassed but understanding,
“You see, a ghost’s emotions attach them to an object associated with why they can’t move on. It could be the building itself, but if it isn’t, then maybe we can find the object that can help us figure out how to help him move on.“ Felix turns to the spot. “Do you know what you’re attached to?” He asks and pauses for a response.
The being must do something to indicate an answer, and it makes Jisung wonder what exactly Felix can see and how he sometimes gets an answer.
“No, he doesn’t,” Felix sighs. “Well, okay, if you can find what the object is, we can maybe use it to help figure out what he needs to move on.”
“Gotcha. I can look for objects. Jisung tries to rack his brain for anything he saw, but his mind is empty; he can’t remember seeing a single thing that was left here when he was moving in, which isn’t giving him a lot of hope there. “So, what’s the second option?”
“The other way is to get him comfortable enough with you that he reveals himself.” Felix states, “It’s incredibly rare that this works, but if the ghost gets comfortable enough, he may let you see him.”
“What?” Jisung deadpans. It sounds a bit crazy, even for all the crazy things that have been thrown his way today. “How do I get something I can’t see comfortable with me?”
“Yeah thats the tricky part. Not super easy to do. My suggestion is to just talk to him, and I don’t know, maybe, stop accusing him of wanting to murder you.” Felix smirks.
Jisung frowns even though Felix was clearly joking, “But I —”
Felix’s phone suddenly goes off, and they both jump. “Shit, I need to get to practice.” Felix gets up, shrugs his backpack back on, and heads for the door.
Jisung jumps up to follow him, a million questions still circling his brain, and Felix was just gonna leave without answering most of them. He finally formulates a coherent sentence as Felix steps outside, “But wait, you’re just gonna leave me here with it?”
Felix gives him a blank look that morphs into a small smile before putting a comforting hand on Jisung’s shoulder, “Look, Im being very honest when I say, you have genuinely nothing to worry about here. This seems like and sounds like one of the kindest ghosts I’ve encountered. You’ve been here, what, almost 2 months now, you said?”
“Yeah,” Jisung answers, not sure what that has to do with the situation
“If he had malicious intentions, he would have done a lot worse by this point,” Felix assures. Jisung feels himself breathe out and calm himself down. “He seems nice. He’s probably just as frustrated and confused about this situation as you are, and he’s been quite kind to you despite that, so just try to be nice back, okay?”
Jisung sighs and nods, “Okay.” Felix’s assurances and comforting touch do wonders to calm him down despite still having a million questions and concerns. “Thank you again for all of this.”
“Of course,” Felix grins and walks down off his front porch, “Good luck! Keep me updated.” Felix calls, plastering a giant grin on before disappearing down the street.
It takes a few minutes for Jisung to pull his brain back together after all the new information it just accumulated. His head spins. How does he even address the new thing in his house? Well, it’s not actually new, but how is he supposed to be comfortable in his own home when he now has confirmation that something else is here, something unexplainable.
He needs to calm down. The comforting words from Felix come back to the forefront of his mind, and he takes a deep breath. He’s just got a new invisible roommate. It’s nothing weird or unusually just normal. If he treats it nicely, it will be nice back.
Jisung turns back into the house and closes the door. “Well, it’s just you and me now, buddy.” He sighs shakily, trying and failing to put on a brave face.
He hears a creak come from the floorboard a few feet away from him, and Jisung takes it as a response.
---
Between classes, homework, and studying, the next week goes by in a blur. Seems most of his social circle is in a similar hectic state cause he hadn’t gotten a chance to see anyone, meaning he’s spending a considerable amount of time at home with his new situation.
Jisung finds himself talking out loud more and more. Partially because of Felix’s suggestion, partially because he is lacking in social interaction lately, but mostly because now that he knows something else is here, he feels the need to explain himself at all times; what he’s working on, what he’s doing, and most importantly to Jisung, when he needs the ghost to leave him alone. He needs at least some privacy.
Seems that now the ghost was aware that Jisung knew it was there, it had no problem making its presence known. It took Jisung a shockingly small amount of time for him to stop freaking out whenever the ghost would respond to his random rambling. He doesn’t always get a response, but when he does, it comes in the form of creaks in the floorboards or cold touches, and once, when he casually asked what he should do with his free afternoon, his TV turned on. The first truly clear response he got.
At this point, Jisung could not even begin to pretend that what was going on was not supernatural. Which is a whole new concept for his brain to tackle, but he decided it was information he would unpack at a later time, maybe when he wasn’t actively dealing with a ghost.
The spirit was quite friendly as far as Jisung could tell. It started with responding to Jisung’s rambling. He found it nice to be able to just rant out loud and know that someone could hear him. Even if he never gets an understandable response, he thinks he’s gotten good at figuring out what the random actions mean.
Now that he was actually willing to acknowledge things happening, he noticed how often the ghost helps him out. Putting things back where they belong when Jisung leaves them out, or organizing random things. Jisung has taken all these small acts as a sort of sign from the spirit that he means no harm.
When he finally gets a moment to breathe between classwork, Jisung takes some time to search the house, looking for anything that the ghost could be tied to. The only things that were left in the house when he moved in were a couple of mouse traps, a beaten-up lawn chair, and a random mug he found in the back of a cabinet.
He texts Felix, who doesn’t seem hopeful but says the mug might be something. When Jisung asks the ghost for an indication if the mug was something, it promptly falls off the counter and shatters into pieces on the floor.
Jisung grumbles about how it could have been less messy about answering, as he sweeps up the shattered mug, and he swears he can hear that faint laughter again.
---
The week before midterms is the worst for Jisung. If he thought the previous week had been anti-social, this week was the worst.
After giving them a rundown of the ghost situation and letting them know the ghost meant him no harm, he had barely heard from Chan and Changbin. Hyunjin had basically locked himself in a studio to practice for his contemporary dance midterm.
With no one around to use as distractions, he’s forced to address the 3 tests, an essay, and a huge project looming over his head. Jisung is deep into a study session when his stomach, which he’s been ignoring, rumbles for the 3rd time in the last hour.
He sees his pencil move all by itself on the other end of his desk. He’s long past the point of something as simple as that, concerning him, and he just rolls his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll get something to eat.” Jisung says to the air as he pushes away from his desk and stretches.
He might not have his friends around, but the ghost has been there to turn the TV off when he gets distracted or remind him to actually take care of himself between studying. For something he can see or talk to, he’s grown incredibly fond of having the ghost around.
Jisung wonders, with the way it treats him, if the ghost has grown fond of him, too. Clearly not enough to let him see it. Wanting to see the ghost had morphed from a desire to see the ghost to get rid of it to a genuine curiosity about his new friend. He wonders if his initial reaction to the being is the reason it's still not comfortable showing itself, and he feels a bit guilty.
He still can’t see the being, but he’s pretty sure he’s gotten a grasp on knowing when the ghost is around. It’s like there’s a slight shift in the air when the ghost is in the room with him, and he can feel him on his tail as he makes his way to the kitchen.
Before Jisung could even make it to the fridge to grab himself something to eat, he spotted three familiar pairs of eyes glowing outside his sliding back door.
“Look who it is,” He grins and slides the door open for the 3 cats, who are sitting nicely at the kitchen threshold, looking up expectantly.
Jisung reaches down and, one by one, gives them head scratches that they happily take.
His other next-door neighbors, Seungmin and I.N., had introduced themselves a few days after Hyunjin. Childhood friends who got the place together to save on rent. Seungmin generously gave Jisung a welcome basket full of goodies. Jisung made a mental note to do the same for future neighbors so he doesn’t look like an asshole compared to Seungmin.
Sitting among the various sweet treats and home goods was a bag of cat food with no explanation. An explanation in the form of 3 felines showed up a few days later, and Jisung has been feeding them every night since.
He meant to ask Seungmin and I.N. how they knew about the cats, but he hadn’t run into them since their introduction.
“I wonder if you know whose cats these are,” Jisung says out loud, assuming the ghost knows he’s talking to it. He hears a creak behind him, which he’s not sure if he should take as a yes or a no, but nods anyway.
Jisung pours the food from Seungmin into a nice pile on the porch. He needs to get them a proper bowl, but they don’t seem to mind eating off the concrete. The three cats, which he had named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, descend on the pile immediately.
“They’re just so cute. I can’t imagine who would let them roam outside.” Jisung says as he gives each of them a thorough scratch, before standing up to finally get food for himself.
“If they’re still coming here once it gets cold out, maybe I’ll bring them —” He starts turning around but stops mid-sentence as something catches his eye, and he freezes.
There, visible for the first time, is the ghost.
“Whoa,” Jisung stares at the figure across the room. The man, he assumes based on his appearance, is leaning very casually against the wall across the room like he’s just been there watching Jisung feed the cats. His face morphs into a look of surprise when Jisung makes clear eye contact that doesn’t waver.
Despite getting quite comfortable with the ghost, Jisung still assumed he would freak out when he was finally able to see it, but the only thing blaring through his brain is, *He’s beautiful.*
The figure is a bit translucent, and all the color in him looks a little washed out, but instead of dulling his appearance, it makes him seem more ethereal. Like a beauty Jisung could only dream up. His facial features are sharp and contrast beautifully with his hair that parts in waves in the middle of his forehead.
The figure frantically looks around like Jisung might be looking at something behind him. Despite the clear panic in the ghost’s eyes, each motion he makes looks smooth and elegant. As he turns, Jisung gets a good look at his sculpture-like side profile. He looks like royalty, maybe he is—was.
“Wait, can you see me?” the figure almost whispers, moving away from the wall to stand up straight.
Jisung finally breaks from his frozen awe and nods, “Yeah.” he’s not really sure what to say and is honestly a bit too stunned to think. The ghost looks shocked by his answer. Eyes widening almost in fear, and as suddenly as he had appeared, he disappeared again.
“Wait,” Jisung calls, looking around, thinking, hoping, the ghost just appeared somewhere else, but he’s gone again just as quickly as he appeared. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Please come back.”
He pauses, waiting for a response. Nothing. “Are you still here?” He calls out but gets no response. It’s not always that he gets a response, and it normally doesn’t bother him, but now it does. He was right here. Jisung could see him, hear him, and he just vanished again.
Maybe his lack of sleep is catching up to him, and it was a hallucination. Maybe he just wants to know what the ghost looks like so bad that he just made it up.
He resigns himself to getting something to eat and getting back to studying, but he spends the rest of the evening waiting for the beautiful ghost to reappear.