Chapter Text

I should’ve brought a jacket.

That’s the first thought that slips into Soeun’s brain the moment she steps over the infamous bathroom’s threshold. Goosebumps crawl up her arms, her breath fogging in front of her.

Her phone’s flashlight cuts through the darkness, sweeping over cracked tiles and old stains that she decides, immediately, not to investigate. Nearly useless mirrors line the wall, clouded over with years of grime and neglect. What they return isn’t quite a reflection. More like a suggestion of one. A girl with a flashlight trying to look braver than she feels.

She moves, and for a half-second, she would swear on it, her shadow doesn’t. It stays for far too long in the corner of her vision, stretched wrong along the wall. When she spins to look, it’s right where it should be. Obedient. Still.

Something drips somewhere deeper in the room.

Water, she tells herself, but the rhythmic plink-plink-plink lands heavier than water should. And the silence between each drop is long enough to fill with other sounds her brain starts reaching for.

Then there’s the smell—the fucking smell—hitting the back of her throat like old coins and tasting like layers of rust. The longer she stands there, the more it settles in. Not fading the way smells do when people get used to them.

She swallows hard, fighting the urge to gag.

Her shoe scrapes against the tile as she steps forward.

And then, so soft she almost loses it beneath the dripping and the sound of her own pulse—

Click.

When she turns, the door is closed.

She simply stares at it, trying to rewrite her own memory, certain she left it ajar. The soft glow of moonlight bled through the hallway windows and shed a little bit of light to the bathroom. She remembers telling herself she wouldn’t go too far in. That she could leave whenever she wanted.

There is no moonlight now.

She steps toward the wooden door. Everything is louder in her ears now. The scuff of her shoes. The rasp of her own breathing. She reaches for the handle and twists, expecting at least the courtesy of resistance.

It gives halfway. Then stops. Unyielding beneath her palm, as if it was never meant to open from this side. She pulls harder, rattles it, but the door doesn’t even shudder in its frame.

She steps back.

That’s when she sees the numbers. The grooves carved deep into the wood are uneven and frantic as if whoever made them kept going back over the same lines, pressing harder again and again until the blade nearly split the surface.

772-0114

Her flashlight holds over them, and for a moment, the numbers look wet, glossy, catching the light in a way wood shouldn’t. She leans in without meaning to. The metallic smell in the air sharpens and moves from the back of her throat to the roof of her mouth.

Plink.

Her spine goes rigid. The sound comes from directly behind her now, no longer from somewhere deeper in the room. She refuses to look.

She knows the ritual. Everyone does.

Dial the number. Close your eyes. Count from one to six. Make a wish.

The wish comes true. That’s what people claim, anyway.

The optimists say it’s straightforward. Ask for something, get it, done. The paranoid ones, especially the ones who post long threads on that stupid forum at three in the morning, insist it’s never that simple. They say wishes get granted in ways that only technically count. That wording and intention matters.

Soeun used to think both versions sounded equally stupid. The world doesn’t bend itself around late-night dares and carved numbers on rotten doors.

Then there are the disappearances.

People say someone tried it once and never came back. Or maybe it was twice. Maybe three times, depending on who’s telling it. The details change. Different names, different years. Someone’s roommate’s friend’s sister. A girl who lives off-campus. Another one who graduated six years ago. No one can ever point to a real person, but everyone swears they’ve heard it from someone reliable.

She used to laugh at all of it. Called it campus myth. Said it survived because people liked being scared of something that couldn’t actually hurt them.

And yet, she is here, with her phone and her shaking hand, and the number right in front of her.

She dials a different one.

It rings for far too long before the line connects.

“Hey? Why are you calling at like… twelve?” Jimin’s voice is still thick with sleep, but the sound alone makes it easier to breathe.

“Jimin,” Soeun’s voice comes out unsteady despite her effort to control it, “I don’t think I should do this. It’s stupid, right? Tell me it’s stupid.”

There’s a small pause. Just enough for doubt to creep in.

“Are you in that bathroom?” Jimin laughs, easy and disbelieving, and Soeun feels her worries dissipate. Like she’s been overthinking over nothing. Like the cold isn’t real.

When Soeun can’t answer, Jimin continues, softer now, “You’ll be fine. Don’t chicken out now.”

“I just—” The words tumble out before she can organize them. “What if—what if something happens? Something bad. You’d be sad, wouldn’t you? If something happened to me.”

She hates how pathetic she sounds. She says it anyway.

“Those rumors aren’t true,” Jimin says. “You were literally the one who told me that.”

In the background, low and drowsy: “Babe, it’s late.”

Something in Soeun’s chest goes very quiet.

“Oof—sorry. I gotta go. You’ll be fine, okay? Text me after!”

“Wait—”

The call drops.

The silence rushes back in to fill the space Jimin left. Soeun stands with her phone still pressed to her ear. The screen goes dark against her cheek as the smell of rust comes back into her throat.

She looks at the numbers on the door.

And then, she thinks of Jimin. The way Jimin laughs, the way she tilts her head when she’s listening. Then, before she can stop it, the other image follows: Jimin in the dark, on her bed, someone else’s hand at her waist, someone else’s voice calling her name.

Her teeth find each other.

Heaviness falls upon her shoulders, sliding down her arms, pooling in her hands like something filling a mold. She watches as her fingers move toward the keypad. Her thumb finds the first digit.

Then the second.

Then the third.

Numbers pressed with a finality. By the time she reaches the last one, her mind is blank.

The line rings once.

Twice.

Silence.

“Hello?” she breathes. She barely recognizes it as her own voice.

Nothing answers, and then, gradually, breathing does. It seeps through the speaker the way cold seeps through walls.

She closes her eyes.

“One.”

Beneath the breathing, threaded through it, comes something higher. A whine or a cry or a voice that forgot how voices work.

“Two.”

The breathing expands. It’s coming from the phone and from the walls and from somewhere behind the back of her own throat.

“Three. Four.”

The air gets hard to swallow, hard to breathe. Her knees start to tremble.

“Five.”

Something touches her shoulder.

“Six.”

She opens her eyes.

And it towers over her, impossibly tall, and she understands immediately, horribly, that she is only seeing it because it is allowing her to.

Its limbs are too long, the joints wrongly hinged. Its head is a sheep’s skull, except that word—skull—implies something clean, something finished. This isn’t finished. Patches of matted fur still cling to rot-soft flesh, the decay seemingly interrupted. Black ooze trails slowly from both nostrils, dripping thickly onto the tile.

One horn spirals outward from the temple, cracked near the base as if it has split and healed wrong. The other curves sharp and polished, gleaming in her phone’s trembling light.

Its mouth hangs slightly open. The lips are dark, split at the corners. Behind them, rows of teeth crowd together, jagged and wrong for any grazing animal.

She can’t look at the eyes. She tries and her gaze simply slides away. But around them, the flesh is raw and red, stretched too tightly over sharp cheekbones, as if the flesh had been crudely sewn over something not meant to be seen.

The creature tilts its head, movement slow, deliberate, and wrong.

Bone grinds against bone somewhere inside its neck. A dry, splintering crunch that she doesn’t just hear but feels behind her back teeth, in the roots of them.

From somewhere deep within its cavernous mouth, laughter begins to rise, spreading into the darkest corners of the room.

Soeun doesn’t move. The choice has simply been removed.

The air smells metallic and sweet and rotting all at once. The creature folds itself downward toward her. Its too-long limbs find new angles, compressing and bending in ways that shouldn’t allow it to get closer but do. Its breath arrives before its face does, thick with decay.

It stops when its skull is level with hers.

The corners of its mouth pull wider.

It is smiling.

The sun shines through the tall windows of the education department, casting long bands of gold across the polished hallway floor. The light makes everything look softer than it normally is.

Haewon moves quickly through the crowd, a folder of sheet music tucked under one arm and a newly-bought coffee in her other hand. Her messenger bag slips from her shoulder as she sidesteps a cluster of first years loitering outside Mr. Boo’s office. They’re laughing too loudly, backpacks hanging open, blissfully unaware of deadlines. She lets out an exasperated huff, catching the strap before it slides down her arm completely.

“Haewon, you’re cutting it close again,” Mr. Boo calls from his doorway the moment he spots her. “This won’t do if you want to graduate.”

“I know, I know!” she calls back without stopping, flashing him an apologetic smile she doesn’t quite feel.

If she trims five minutes off vocal warmups and skips re-running the second verse, she can still make it to her tutoring shift on time. Maybe.

By the time she reaches the tiny practice room at the end of the corridor, her coffee has gone cold.

It's been one thing after another since she woke up today—overdue assignment reminders, revised lesson plans that still aren’t good enough, emails from her college secretary she hasn’t opened yet because she doesn’t have the energy for bad news, and now this.

She drops the bag onto the floor, slides her folder on the desk, and then reaches for the acoustic guitar from its place at the corner. Unlike the others lined against the wall, this one is spotless. She wipes it down every week and keeps it tuned. Her fingers glide over the polished wood, thumb brushing over the faint scratch near the bridge she’s been meaning to buff out for weeks but never quite gets around to fixing.

She settles into the chair and lets the guitar rest against her thigh. When she strums the first chord, the sound blooms warmly in the small room, vibrating against her ribs.

For a moment, the world slows down.

Her phone dings from her bag. She ignores it at first, finishing the chord progression before digging for it. The screen lights up with Lily’s name.

[GSWU] Lily Morrow

Today, 4:28 PM

Lily

I’ll show you something later

Guess what it’s about hehe

Hint: 🧼🧼🧼

A soft laugh escapes her, surprising her how easily it comes. She leans back to her chair and lets the last chord fade into silence.

Of course it’s going to be about the bathroom.

The story has been circulating for years, even before Haewon entered college. Seniors warned freshmen. People recycled the same grainy photos and half-remembered incidents. It should’ve died out by now, the way ghost stories do when they get told too many times.

But the noise surrounding it has gotten louder lately. More posts, threads, people claiming to know someone who tried the ritual. And Lily has been especially relentless about it.

Every coffee break turns into a theory session. Every message somehow circles back to the “missing” students.

And tonight, Haewon knows, she’ll have to sit across from her and listen to every new discovery with a patient smile. She’ll nod. She’ll say “that’s crazy” in the right places.

Because it’s Friday.

And Friday means meeting up, even when she’s exhausted. It means being present and reliable, adding one more thing to her already overflowing pile of responsibilities.

She lets herself imagine turning off her phone and pretending she didn’t see the messages. Staying here until her tutoring shift, then coming back to finish this assignment she’s already behind on. She could say she forgot. That she fell asleep. Or that she needed to focus.

The thought lasts only a second.

Truth is, joining the occult club was never part of Haewon’s plan. Four years ago, she had a very specific image of how university would go: good grades, networking, and internships lined up neatly. A polished resume to open many doors. There was no space in that vision for seances or ghost hunting or whatever Lily does.

Lily carved that space out herself.

She stood in front of Haewon with that bright smile, already convinced the world was stranger than it looked. She talked fast, recalling stories about urban legends and the supernatural as if she personally uncovered them. She didn’t just like ghost stories, she wanted to live inside them, to pull back the world's curtain and see what was breathing underneath.

“Come on,” Lily smiles, leaning in conspiratorially. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Against her better judgement, Haewon followed anyway. And for four years, she stayed.

It wasn’t terrible, most of the time. Their events were more theatrical than dangerous. They sat in dim rooms and swapped ghost stories that grew more ridiculous as the evening deepened, each person trying to outdo the last. They crept through “haunted buildings” that turned out to be nothing more than dusty structures with bad wiring and worse acoustics. They jumped at shadows and then laughed at themselves.

At its core, it felt less like a club and more like a habit. An excuse to stay together.

Their seniors graduated last year. No new applicants followed. Haewon assumed the bathroom rumors would bring in fresh curiosity, maybe even a crowd of thrill-seekers eager to test themselves. But it didn’t. The people who were interested didn’t want commitment. The people who valued commitment didn’t want ghosts. So the membership dwindled quietly until one day it was just them.

Six girls clinging to a club that barely exists anymore.

Haewon could leave. Logically, she should. She already has too much on her plate. Between teaching practicums, tutoring shifts, performances and applications, she doesn’t have the luxury of extracurricular distractions that don’t contribute to her future.

But leaving would mean leaving Lily.

And Lily is… Lily.

She acts first and thinks second, if she thinks at all. Her mouth is always faster than her brain, which lands her in trouble more often than not. And it’s frustrating because Lily is brilliant. She catches nuances other people miss. She writes papers that are layered and clever. If she wanted to, she could dominate academically.

But she channels that energy into chasing mysteries and adrenaline. As if the ordinary world isn’t enough to hold her attention. As if Haewon isn’t enough.

There was that time she snuck into the old dormitory basement alone because she wanted to “see the blood painting” for herself. She showed up at Haewon’s dorm later with dust in her hair, cobwebs clinging to her cardigan.

The RA nearly reprimanded her upon seeing her sneak up. But Lily spun an elaborate lie about Haewon being sick and needing medicine. Haewon stood there, playing along because what else could she do.

And then there’s Jinsol.

If Lily burns bright and fast, Jinsol burns hot.

Sure, Haewon gets along with her most of the time. Jinsol’s humor often makes the club meetings bearable. But responsibility? That’s where it falls apart.

Jinsol still hasn’t properly apologized for dragging the two youngest members into that so-called haunted forest and abandoning them there as a prank. It took Jiwoo crying before Jinsol finally stepped out from behind a tree, laughing so hard she teared up too.

Later, when she retold the story, Lily laughed and suggested she do it to Yoona next.

The two of them fuel each other like kindling to a flame. Lily sparks the idea and Jinsol pushes it further. Haewon scrambles to contain the damage. Sometimes literally. She still has the burn marks on her calf from trying to stomp a burning curtain out courtesy of—who else!—Jinsol.

And speaking of Yoona… Haewon lets out a slow exhale.

It’s not that she dislikes Yoona, she just doesn’t get her. Yoona seems so invested, so eager to absorb everything. She can recite entire ritual procedures from memory and trace patterns between urban legends. She’s always on her phone, scrolling through forums full of conspiracies and stories. Half the weird tidbits Lily spews probably come from her late-night rabbit holes.

But when it’s time to step into those places, to stand in the dark and wait for something to happen, Yoona vanishes. She always has an excuse, doing her “mammal anaphys" assignment or whatever fake words she makes up. She seems like she wants to know everything about the edge, but she never quite steps over it. It frustrates Haewon more than outright fear would. At least fear is honest.

Even Jiwoo, who admits she’s terrified of her own shadow, shows up when it matters.

But Jiwoo isn’t a leader. She’s too kind for it, in a way that works against her.

During their visit to the abandoned temple on the outskirts of town, she latched onto Haewon’s arm so tightly that her nails left crescent marks through her sleeve. When a loose shutter banged against the stone wall, Jiwoo nearly turned to run. But she stopped herself halfway and forced her feet to stay planted because Lily and Kyujin were still inside and Jinsol wandered off to “check something out.”

That’s the thing with Jiwoo. She tries, even when she’s terrified, even when no one expects her to. It’s admirable, sure, but she’s too willing to bend until she breaks. Unable to draw a line.

And that leaves Kyujin.

Sometimes Haewon sees flashes of her younger self in her. She carries her ambition like armor, with pride. She wants to prove herself not just to the club but to the university, to the world beyond it. She volunteers first. She studies harder. She pushes further.

But Haewon’s seen what happens when that armor cracks. She’s noticed Kyujin’s tight smile when something doesn’t go her way, that frustration when she falls short. It wouldn’t be fair to pile everyone else’s weight on her shoulders when she’s only beginning to figure out how much she can carry on her own.

So it always circles back to Haewon. She tells herself that’s the reason she stays. They need someone to rely on. Someone who will double-check the exits, count heads before they leave, make sure everyone gets back. Someone who will hold the line.

She strums another chord. Right, her project. She’s tired but there’s no room for that.

But, if she’s being honest, staying is easier. Holding everything together means she doesn’t have to think too hard about what comes next.

Haewon, like always, will do what she’s always done.

Socks peek out from beneath Jiwoo’s pillows, their mismatched colors glaring against the pale sheets.

Jiwoo catches sight of them and can’t help the awkward grin that tugs at her lips. Kyujin will notice within minutes, and a lecture about “shared living spaces” and “basic hygiene standards” will follow. Jiwoo will nod solemnly, promise to fix it, and then forget again by Saturday.

The blankets are worse. It’s twisted into a messy nest that spills onto the floor, threatening to swallow the crumpled snack wrappers that have somehow accumulated under her bed.

God, she is messy.

Across the room, Kyujin’s space looks like it was staged for a photoshoot. The sheets are pulled taut. A row of stuffed animals sits arranged against the headboard in descending size order. Jasmine drifts from the diffuser on her desk.

Jiwoo has lived here for a little over a year and she still doesn’t understand how someone maintains that level of control. It exhausts her just looking at it.

“It smells like my halmeoni’s hand cream,” Jiwoo remarks as she fully enters their room. Maybe if she talks first, Kyujin won’t launch her cleanliness lecture again.

“And yet, you’re still breathing just fine,” Kyujin replies without turning around. “Also, please put your socks in the laundry basket. And pick up your trash. And don’t let your blanket fall to the floor!”

So much for that.

Kyujin’s back remains perfectly straight at her desk,drawing a square with her mouse. Or perhaps it’s something more complex than that. Jiwoo gave up trying to decipher Kyujin’s coursework months ago. The diagrams and the endless precision all feel like a language Jiwoo will never speak.

Instead of defending herself, Jiwoo flops onto Kyujin’s bed, limbs sprawling in every direction. The sheets smell like fresh laundry, like they always do.

“It’s been such a loooong day.”

“Long day of what?” Now, Kyujin swivels her chair halfway around, one eyebrow lifting in judgement. “Daydreaming about Jinsol-unnie again?”

Heat floods Jiwoo’s face so quickly it almost makes her dizzy. She pushes herself up on her elbows, trying to look offended.

“No?” The word rises at the end despite her best effort to sound convincing.

She’s not lying per se. She wouldn’t call it daydreaming. That makes it sound intentional, like she sits down and decides to think about Jinsol for extended periods of time. It’s not like that. Jinsol just… hovers. At the edges of her thoughts, slipping in between lectures and unfinished notes.

Jiwoo juts her bottom lip out and looks away.

Their college buildings are close enough that running into each other isn’t unusual. Earlier today, Jiwoo was walking back toward the dorm, distracted by the weight of her bag and the dull ache behind her eyes, when she spotted Jinsol. She’s crossing the street in her baseball jersey, smiling at something on her phone. The late afternoon sun caught her just right, turning everything gold.

Jiwoo could’ve called out. Should have, probably. Instead, she told herself she didn’t want to interrupt. Jinsol looked busy and it would be awkward to shout across traffic.

So she kept walking.

“Right.”

Jiwoo grabs the nearest pillow and throws it in her direction. “Shut up!”

Kyujin leans back to dodge it easily, laughter spilling out of her. “You’re lucky I put up with you.”

“No, you’re lucky I make your boring life fun.”

Jiwoo’s eyes land on one of Kyujin’s neatly arranged stuffed animals—a gray wolf wearing an embroidered scarf—and she seizes it without warning, desperate for a distraction.

“See? Yeji here agrees with me.”

Kyujin gasps as if Jiwoo has just committed a felony. She stands quickly, crossing the room in two long steps.

“Hey! Leave Yeji out of this.” She catches the wolf when Jiwoo tosses it lightly into the air, then cradles it protectively on her chest. “She’s my best friend.”

“Best friend? Oh really? And what has she done for you? Huh? What?”

“She’s my moral support! She listens. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t make questionable decisions. And best of all, she keeps her side of the room clean.”

Jiwoo clicks her tongue. “Wow. The standards are impressively low.”

Kyujin ignores that, gently returning Yeji to her designated spot. She adjusts the wolf until it sits perfectly upright again, scarf smoothed and paws aligned with the others. Only then does she sit beside Jiwoo on the edge of the mattress, letting out a sigh that sounds more tired than annoyed.

“Unlike some people who only complain.”

Jiwoo narrows her eyes in mock offense. “Excuse you, I don’t complain that much.”

“I didn’t say it was you.” Kyujin’s lips twitch as she pulls her laptop onto her lap and starts working again.

Sometimes, Jiwoo wonders if it’s exhausting. If Kyujin ever wants to just collapse into the mess the way Jiwoo does.

“What’s that?” Jiwoo asks, more to fill the silence than because she actually wants to know about machines or whatever.

“Coding linkages. Just getting the angles right. I need to be precise about it because it’s not going to move the way I want to otherwise.” Kyujin’s eyes stay fixated on the screen while she speaks.

“That seems hard.”

“It’s fine.” Kyujin glances at her. “You get used to it. It’s just a whole lot of adjusting until it looks right.”

Jiwoo nods as if she understands, then moves closer to the screen. After a second, she straightens her back, narrows her eyes, and begins mimicking Kyujin’s typing.

“Yes,” she mutters in a low voice, attempting to sound like her friend. “Very important square. Must be adjusted. The angles are… angling.”

Kyujin stares at her blankly for exactly two seconds before going back to her work.

At home, quiet was never like this. Silence was just waiting for the wrong thing to shatter it. Doors closed a little too hard. Footsteps stomped down the hallway. Jiwoo learned to brace herself without knowing exactly why.

Here, the quiet is just quiet. It’s soft and nice. She can sit beside Kyujin for hours without speaking, both of them focused on their own things, and the room doesn’t feel like it’s waiting to explode. It’s strange how quickly they’d shifted from awkward strangers crammed into the same space to this.

Jiwoo doesn’t have to shrink herself to keep the peace. The mess she leaves behind is just mess, just clutter.

She shifts on the bed until her head hangs slightly off the edge, the ceiling blurring above. She turns her head just enough to glance at Kyujin when the girl lets out a tired sigh.

On the screen still are lines and shapes and numbers that Jiwoo doesn’t understand. She stares at it anyway, trying to follow.

Then Kyujin closes the file.

Jiwoo perks up immediately. Her attention snaps into place as YouTube loads onto the screen. She rolls onto her stomach, watching Kyujin click the refresh button over and over again.

“Is it out yet?”

“Patience.”

“It's already past five!”

“And that means it’ll be up any second now.”

Jiwoo pushes herself upright, scooting closer until her shoulder bumps against Kyujin’s. “You’ve been saying that for the past five minutes.”

“Five whole minutes?” Kyujin echoes with a fake gasp. “How ever have you survived?”

Jiwoo huffs, but she doesn’t move away.

When the video thumbnail finally appears, Jiwoo lets out a triumphant cheer and lunges for Kyujin’s wireless speaker. In her haste, she nearly sends it tumbling off the desk.

The familiar jingle of their favorite video starts to play, tinny at first before the speaker balances out the sound. They settle into their usual positions without needing to discuss it: Kyujin with her back against the pillows, and Jiwoo sitting cross-legged beside her, leaning forward slightly to see the screen better. Her eyesight isn’t great but she’s too lazy to get her glasses in her bag.

The hosts launch into their opening banter, voices animated and slightly unhinged in the way Jiwoo loves. Tonight’s episode is about UFO sightings in Chungcheong, about government cover-ups and secret landing sites.

“Okay, but seriously,” Jiwoo snorts, “how did he mistake a trash can for a spaceship? That guy was obviously drunk.”

Kyujin hums like she’s deep in contemplation, hand stroking her chin. “Or the aliens were just testing humanity’s observational skills. And we failed.”

Halfway through the episode, Jiwoo’s phone vibrates against the mattress. She reaches for it without thinking, laughing from whatever Kyujin just said, and only pauses when she sees the name on the screen.

Yoona texts more than the others. Links to articles. Screenshots from forums. The occasional “Have you eaten?” or “How have you been?” She helps her with her lab reports and sometimes, she sends her money when Jiwoo says she’s too broke for lunch.

Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s a little suffocating.

Jiwoo tells herself that it’s unfair to think of it that way.

“It’s from Yoona-unnie.” She tilts the screen so Kyujin can see.

Kyujin leans closer as Jiwoo opens the link Yoona sent. The page loads slowly, the campus logo appearing first.

The message beneath it makes Jiwoo’s stomach sink.

“Ooooh, they locked the building.” Sarcasm drips from every syllable Kyujin speaks. “Definitely not suspicious at all.”

Jiwoo lowers her phone but keeps staring at the screen. The phrasing nags at her. If it’s entirely unfounded, why lock it? Why threaten disciplinary action?

“You think everything is suspicious,” she says, though there’s less conviction in her voice than before.

Kyujin crosses her arms, brows furrowing. “Because it usually is. Why would they care so much about some dumb rumor unless there’s something to it?”

Exactly.

“Maybe they’re just tired of people filming stupid videos in there. You know how fast it spreads once one person posts something.”

She knows she’s trying to rationalize it. She can hear it in her own tone.

“You’re starting to sound like Lily-unnie,” she adds, hoping that deflecting it will make Kyujin’s logic less convincing.

“And Lily-unnie is right half the time,” Kyujin asserts with a grin. “What if it’s some killer professor hiding evidence? Or a secret underground lab? Something juicy.”

“Juicy?” Jiwoo repeats, an eyebrow raising up.

“The ritual is just a distraction. The bathroom is actually a portal to another dimension. They locked it because someone almost figured it out.”

“Or it leads to the sewers.”

“You have no imagination.”

“Say that to Pennywise.”

Kyujin laughs, and for a brief second, it almost feels ridiculous to take any of it seriously.

Jiwoo looks down at her phone and types.

[Occult Club] Yoona-unnie

Jiwoo

thats kinda weird.....

Yoona

right?

i heard they found a knife there last week or something

Jiwoo’s fingers go still over the screen. Her spine straightens without her meaning to.

“A knife?” Kyujin frowns. “What the hell?”

[Occult Club] Yoona-unnie

Jiwoo

???????????????

Yoona

yeah its on the forum

tho it might just be a rumor

ppl are saying it's connected to the disappearances

do you think they're real?

Jiwoo

no but id rather not find out

Yoona

me neither...... but i feel like they're gna want to.... esp now

yk..... those three

Jiwoo glares at Kyujin, who meets her gaze with a sheepish, unapologetic smile.

“She’s not wrong.”

“You’re not seriously thinking about trying it.”

Kyujin shrugs, stretching her arms behind her head. “Not alone.”

It’s meant to reassure her. Jiwoo can hear that in the tone. I wouldn’t do something that stupid by myself. But it only makes her stomach sink further. Because that’s exactly how it happens. No one wants to do something reckless alone. It’s braver when it’s shared. Safer when there’s laughter echoing down the hallway. The fear dissipates when everyone pretends it’s a joke.

Her phone vibrates again.

[Occult Club] Yoona-unnie

Yoona

you wouldnt go if they did right?

Jiwoo could say no. She could even mean it, sitting safely in this room with jasmine in the air and YouTube still paused on the screen. Right now, the idea of creeping down a dark hallway to test a stupid campus legend feels ridiculous.

But she also knows herself too well. She knows that she’ll follow anyway.

And the realization scares her. Because following means being there, and being there means standing in front of that door.

Her gaze drifts back to her phone, back to Yoona’s unanswered question. A knife is not a ghost story. A knife is something someone holds. Something someone uses. She swallows hard, pulse picking up, and looks at her best friend again.

“Kyujin,” Jiwoo starts, her voice quieter now. “What if this isn’t just some story?”

Kyujin lifts a brow. “Weren’t you shutting down my conspiracies like two minutes ago? Why are you getting so serious?”

“They found a knife.”

“Reread your messages. It might be a rumor.”

“And what if it’s not?” Jiwoo snaps.

It comes out of her before she can stop it, and it feels foreign in her mouth, wrong somehow. Kyujin blinks at her, clearly startled.

Jiwoo is startled too. She had never raised her voice at Kyujin like that. But this one feels different.

There’s no logic to it, no proof. But there’s that visceral sensation she gets when she steps into a crosswalk and a car turns too fast. A subtle change in the air that tells her something is off, even when she can’t name what.

She can’t explain it without sounding dramatic. But she can’t ignore it either.

“Jiwoo, come on.” Kyujin coaxes. “It’s just a stupid story people tell to scare others. You’re letting this get to you. Besides, even if it’s real, what’s the harm in finding out? I mean, I’d want to know what happened to those missing girls. Imagine the headlines: Second-year engineering student, Jang Kyujin, solves a mystery of disappearances. I’d be the talk of the town!”

“And what happens after your headline?” Jiwoo grabs a pillow and smacks Kyujin’s arm just hard enough to make her point. “They print your obituary next?”

“Please.” Kyujin catches the pillow and clutches it to her chest. “I won’t let it come to that.”

“Yeah, because those missing girls are all totally fine.”

“Missing girls.” Kyujin repeats, adding air quotes with her fingers.

Jiwoo’s gaze drops to the floor as her thoughts spiral. What if someone did stand in front of that door thinking it was just a story? What if they laughed, just like this, and told their friends not to be dramatic? What if the last thing they felt was embarrassment for being scared, for taking it seriously when no one else did?

She thinks of Yoona’s question again: You wouldn’t go if they did, right?

Yoona would stay back. She always does. If Jiwoo stays, at least she won’t be the odd one out.

But then she imagines Kyujin walking down that hallway without her, and Jiwoo suddenly feels cold and sick. Because what if something does happen? What if she isn’t there?

Her gaze lifts when she feels a hand squeeze her shoulder.

“It’s always gone well for us, hasn’t it?” Kyujin says, more sincere than Jiwoo expects.

Jiwoo wants to believe her. She really does.

Kyujin smiles again. “Doesn’t it make you just a little curious?”

“Curiosity gets people killed.”

“Good thing I’m not people.”

Jiwoo’s lips twitch upward, the beginnings of a reluctant smile pulling at her mouth despite herself.

Maybe Kyujin is right. Maybe curiosity isn’t such a bad thing. Or maybe Jiwoo just trusts that Kyujin won’t actually let anything harm her.

And trust, she’ll learn, can be the most dangerous thing of all.

The occult club isn’t nearly as dark as people expect it to be.

Most people imagine something theatrical. Long, black curtains pooling on the floor, candles melting into puddles of wax, strange symbols painted across the walls in something that might be blood but is probably just acrylic. But in reality, the room feels more like an archive than anything sinister.

Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. Dust clings to the edges of wooden shelves that bow slightly under the weight of decades’ worth of notebooks and yellowing printouts from message boards that barely exist anymore.

Years of curiosity live here. Years of people wanting answers badly enough to start writing them down.

Yoona stands in front of one of the shelves, running her fingers slowly along the cracked spines of old notebooks. Most of them are labeled with dates and initials, titles scrawled in fading marker: Field Notes or Urban Case Log or Unexplained Phenomena - Fall 1989. The handwriting changes every few years.

Her fingers pause on a yellow notebook. The cover is soft with age, the corners frayed from being opened too many times. Yoona slides it free from the shelf and flips it open halfway through. She knows this one by heart.

Spectral echoes.

The handwriting is neat at first, then grows increasingly erratic as the entries progress. The writer describes hearing whispers that seem to come from just behind her shoulder. Reverberations. Heavy footsteps repeating themselves seconds after they’ve already faded. Doors closing twice. Voices calling from rooms no one is in.

According to the notes, it followed her everywhere. Campus hallways. Her dorm room. Even outside, walking back from the library at night.

If the girl really experienced what she described—and Yoona has no reason to doubt she believed it—the explanation is probably simpler than she wanted it to be.

Chronic sleep deprivation can cause auditory hallucinations. Stress compounds it. If someone already believes in supernatural causes, their brain fills in the rest. It commits to the narrative, weaving the threads into something cohesive, something that makes sense of the senselessness. The human brain hates uncertainty after all. People would rather believe something is haunting them than accept that their own mind might be failing them.

It’s kinder that way, in a sense. Ghosts can be named. Ghosts can be avoided, appeased, understood. A failing mind is harder to bargain with.

Yoona traces the jagged underline beneath the phrase they’re getting louder with the tip of her finger, then closes the notebook carefully. She slides it back into place, aligning the spine with the others.

Somewhere behind her, the door creaks open.

She turns just as Lily walks in, backpack slung over one shoulder and looking like she just sprinted across campus.

“You beat me here? Nerd.” Lily drops her bag onto the nearest table, then flops onto one of the couches, pulling her legs up underneath her.

“Just barely.” Yoona steps away from the shelf, moving toward the chair opposite Lily and sitting down. “How are classes?”

“Eh.”

The sparks that usually live in Lily’s eyes dim for a moment.

Lily suddenly sits up straighter. “Have you seen that shadow ritual thing on the forum?”

“The one with the shadow getting closer?”

A guy attempted some vague wishing ritual because he was lonely. According to his story, the wish never came true. At least not in any way he could recognize. But a week later, he started noticing a figure standing at the end of his hallway every night. Always far away, always still. Just the whites of its eyes floating in the dark.

Yoona read the thread twice. Not because she believed it, no—there were too many holes, too many conveniently dramatic beats—but she wanted to understand why other people did.

Because real incidents rarely get written like that.

Real things come in fragments. In contradictions. Half-finished notes scribbled in the margins of notebooks like the ones stacked on the shelves behind her. Someone writes something down once, maybe twice, and then the record stops.

The most unsettling cases in the club archives never unfold neatly. They simply… end.

“Yeah!” The excitement fully comes back into Lily’s voice. “If he listed out the steps, it could’ve been fun to try. See if it’s real.”

Yoona’s brow creases almost immediately.

People, including Lily, always talk about these things like they’re puzzles to solve or games to play. A ritual becomes a set of instructions people can follow or break. A haunting becomes a challenge to prove whether it’s real, to see who’s brave enough. The possibility of real consequences gets flattened into something abstract. Something that happens to other people in other stories.

“It won’t really be fun.”

Lily leans forward across the table, propping her forearms. “What do you mean?”

“It’s scary how many of those stories end the same way,” Yoona goes quieter. “People make a wish. They think it’s a joke. They think they’re in control. But then…”

“They lose more than they bargained for.” Lily finishes for her, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I know.”

Yoona searches her face for some sign that Lily actually grasps what she’s saying. But Lily’s eyes are still bright with that restless energy, that hunger for answers that Yoona recognizes. Because she feels it too. The difference is that Yoona has learned to be afraid of it.

“So, please,” Yoona starts, almost pleading, “don’t do these kinds of things if you’re not ready for the consequences. No matter how stupid it seems at first.”

Lily tilts her head, considering, then states, “It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think?”

“Hm?”

“How desire can—”

“Destroy you?”

“Change you,” Lily says instead, smiling wide like she’s correcting a misunderstanding rather than disagreeing fundamentally. “Not everyone gets destroyed. Some people get what they want and come out okay.”

Yoona lets the silence do the talking, her fingers tapping lightly against the table.

Her mind drifts back to the stacks of notes she’s spent too many afternoons cataloguing. Old case files. Personal journals. Half-finished investigations from students who once sat exactly where they’re sitting now. Who probably said the same things Lily is saying. Who probably believed they’d be the exception.

The door creaks open again before either of them can say anything else.

Haewon pauses near the doorway, her eyes sweeping across the room. Her gaze lands on Lily first, then shifts briefly to Yoona. Her expression folds into a faint frown.

Yoona just lets out a sigh.

She and Haewon have never really gotten along. They’re not openly hostile. Not enough to cause problems within the group. But there’s always been something off in the way their conversations land.

Yoona has tried, in the past, to figure out why.

Haewon is careful and responsible. She double-checks things before acting, notices small details most people ignore. She keeps lists and contingency plans. In theory, they should understand each other. Two people who think before they leap. Two people who see the risk everyone else ignores.

And yet every interaction seems to stall somewhere halfway between politeness and discomfort, like neither of them can quite find the right footing. Conversations peter out. Silences stretch too long. Eye contact doesn’t hold.

Sometimes Yoona wonders if Haewon simply doesn’t like her.

Haewon drops her bag onto the nearest chair and rubs her temple, eyes closing briefly. “My students still can’t tune their instruments.”

Lily laughs. “It’s been two months and you’re already tired of teaching?”

“It’s not teaching yet,” Haewon mumbles, pulling the chair next to Lily out and sitting down with a heavy exhale. “It’s basic listening at best. If five people are playing the same note, at least one of them should notice when it sounds wrong.”

“You’re expecting self-awareness from first years. Give them a break.”

The corner of Haewon’s mouth twitches to an almost smile. “I’m expecting them to use their ears.”

Yoona sits across from them, her hands folded loosely on the table, fully expecting not to be a part of this conversation.

Lily looks at her suddenly. “Yoona, you ever played an instrument?”

“Not really, no.”

“Not even a recorder in elementary school?”

Yoona shakes her head.

Her elementary school years aren’t something she thinks about if she can help it. Most of that time exists in her memory as a blur punctuated by one very sharp, very clear incident she’s spent the better part of a decade trying to forget. An accident. Or something close to one, though accident implies randomness.

She doesn’t like thinking about it anymore.

“Tragic,” Lily pouts. “We could’ve started a band.”

“Oh, right!” She suddenly snaps her fingers, her whole body perking up. “Look at this.”

She digs into her bag, rummaging around with increasing urgency before pulling out something wrapped in a clear ziplock bag. She holds it up between two fingers like she’s presenting evidence at a trial.

Inside the plastic is a phone.

Haewon’s eyebrows knit together as she stares at it. “What is that?”

“A phone, duh.” Lily shakes the bag lightly. “I found it in that bathroom.”

“You what?” Haewon’s voice jumps up an octave, her arms raising up in disbelief. “Please tell me it’s not the bathroom they just locked.”

“I went before they locked it.” Lily reasons like that makes it fine.

“That’s not the point!” Haewon leans to snatch it, but Lily pulls it away. “What if someone’s looking for that? Whoever left it there—”

“—is part of the mystery!” Lily interrupts, her grin unfaltering. If anything, the tension in Haewon’s voice seems to excite her more. She lifts the bag a little higher. “Come on, Haewon. This is something. I can feel it.”

Yoona shifts in her seat. She doesn’t like conflict. Never has. It makes the air in the room feel thinner, harder to navigate.

The door swings open again before the argument can escalate further.

Kyujin strolls in first.

“Good evening!” she calls easily, her voice bright and unbothered unlike the two oldest members of the club.

Jiwoo follows just a step behind her.

Yoona’s eyes snap to Jiwoo almost instinctively, the rest of the room blurring into background noise.

Jiwoo pauses near the doorway, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she glances toward the brewing argument between Lily and Haewon.

Yoona takes a small step closer, her heart tripping over itself and fumbling to think of something to say. She needs to say something. Something casual. Something that won’t sound like she’s been waiting for Jiwoo to arrive, even though she has been. Even though she always is.

Maybe she could mention the forum discussion from earlier. Or the notebook she was reading. Something, anything, that might pull Jiwoo’s attention.

Before she can force words out, Jinsol strides into the room.

She radiates a charm Yoona could never hope to replicate. Baseball jersey half-untucked, a streak of dirt smudged across her cheek, she flashes a smile that fills the space before she even opens her mouth.

“Good people of the occult club!” She announces with her arms wide. “Sorry I’m late. Game ran long. You won’t believe the double play I pulled off.”

Yoona’s eyes go back to Jiwoo just in time to see her face light up.

Everything in Jiwoo’s posture changes. Her shoulders turn toward Jinsol like Jinsol’s gravity just became the strongest force in the room. Everyone else might as well have vanished.

A familiar ache settles in Yoona’s stomach. She glances down at her hands, her nails pressing half-moons into her palms. Whatever words she had planned have already dissolved like smoke. Nothing she prepared matters now. It never does when Jinsol’s around.

Jinsol saunters further into the room and plucks the ziplock bag from Lily’s hand without asking. “Oooh, is this the phone?”

“Yep!” Lily beams, clearly delighted to have her antics validated by someone who matches her energy.

Haewon’s sharp glare lands squarely on Jinsol. “You knew about this and you didn’t stop her?”

“She told me after she already grabbed it,” Jinsol tells her, waving the bag near Haewon’s face like it’s a prop in a joke only she (and probably Lily) finds funny, “and look at her—she’s fine. No need to get so worked up.”

“Are we going to wait until someone isn’t fine?” Haewon’s voice rises in pitch and volume. “Is that the plan? Wait for something bad to actually happen before we stop doing stupid shit?”

Yoona exhales slowly, retreating a half-step toward the corner as the argument heats up again. Her gaze drifts back to Jiwoo without permission.

Jiwoo is now standing beside Kyujin, both of them watching the three argue with their eyebrows raised. Kyujin leans over and murmurs something Yoona can’t hear. Jiwoo covers her mouth trying to stifle a laugh, shoulders shaking slightly.

Jiwoo’s laugh—so bright it knocks the breath out of her—fills the room like light through a crack she can’t close. She hates how much she loves that sound. How much she lingers on it, replays it in her mind later when she’s alone. How that laugh is never, ever for her.

Yoona tries to look away but can’t. She’s too aware of Jiwoo standing there, smile getting bigger as her gaze follows Jinsol across the room.

And Yoona feels the sting of it like pressing hard on an already tender bruise. Her thoughts spiral into the hollow, unspoken truth she keeps trying to bury: she’ll never hold Jiwoo’s attention the way Jinsol does.

Not with anything she has to offer.

“They don’t want people there anymore!” Haewon shouts, jerking Yoona sharply out of her thoughts. “There’s a reason for that!”

“And why not?” Lily counters, her voice rising to match Haewon’s. “We’ve always gone to other haunted places, haven’t we? Why should this one be any different? It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve taken risks.”

“The announcement said. Stay. Away,” Haewon insists firmly, one hand on her forehead. “If people truly have disappeared—and recently, mind you—”

Jinsol pushes herself upright from where she’d been leaning against the table. “Disappearances don’t always mean supernatural, you know. What if it’s just someone trying to scare people off?”

“Isn’t that worse?”

Yoona’s voice stops the overlapping chatter, and the sudden quiet that follows makes her painfully aware of every eye turning toward her. She straightens slightly under the attention, resisting the instinct to shrink back into herself.

“Like Haewon-unnie’s trying to say,” Yoona continues, forcing herself to maintain eye contact with no one in particular, “if someone’s really disappearing over this, shouldn’t we—”

“Investigate?” Kyujin finishes brightly, the grin on her face widening like Yoona just handed her the perfect argument.

“Girl, no.” Jiwoo slaps Kyujin’s arm immediately, her eyes wide with disbelief.

Then those same eyes flick toward Yoona. Finally.

“Didn’t they find a knife there?” Jiwoo asks, her brow creasing slightly with concern.

Yoona’s ears burn. Of course Jiwoo remembers that detail. She's the one who told her in the first place, even though she’d mentioned it might be a rumor. And now she has to backtrack. Idiot.

“Y-yeah, but, uh—” Yoona clears her throat quickly, hating the stammer in her voice. Better to come clean now rather than later. “It’s fake. Just a rumor. I checked the original forum post and they admitted they made it up for engagement.”

The moment the words leave her mouth, she wishes she phrased them differently. The truth matters to her—accurate information, verifiable details, facts over fiction—but sometimes accuracy dismantles the very caution she’s trying to encourage. Sometimes honesty works against her.

Jiwoo’s shoulders relax slightly. She offers Yoona a small, relieved smile. “Oh. Good.”

That smile does something to Yoona’s resolve. It makes her want to tell Jiwoo everything will be fine, that there’s nothing to worry about, that she’ll make sure nothing bad happens. Even though she can’t promise any of that.

“But—” Yoona tries to salvage it. It doesn't mean it's safe. Rumors start somewhere. The bathroom being locked is still a fact. There are still unexplained—

“There you have it—it's fake!” Jinsol cuts her off effortlessly, voice loud and certain. She turns to Haewon with both hands spread wide. “No knife. No actual evidence. It’s in our league, Haewon-unnie!”

“Okay, so,” She claps her hands together once, “whoever wants to investigate, raise your hand.”

Of course.

Yoona knew this would happen. She’d known the moment the ritual rumors started spreading faster, the moment the university issued that formal announcement, the moment they locked the door like that would actually stop anyone. She’d warned Jiwoo about this exact scenario earlier, too.

There’s doubt flickering across Jiwoo’s face. Her eyes dart quickly between the raised hands, between Lily and Kyujin… and Jinsol. Slowly, hesitantly, she begins to lift her hand.

Yoona moves without thinking. She crosses the space between them in three quick steps, her fingers wrapping gently but firmly around Jiwoo’s wrist. The contact sends a jolt through her that she ignores, focusing instead on guiding Jiwoo’s hand back down to her side.

“Look,” Yoona says, forcing her voice to stay even though her pulse is suddenly loud in her ears, “they locked that bathroom for a reason.”

Yoona's mind flashes back to the conversation she'd had with Lily earlier. The shadow ritual and all those stories that start and end with the same thing.

“And rituals like that don’t end well.” Her grip on Jiwoo’s wrist loosens but she doesn’t let go. “Ever.”

Jiwoo blinks at her. And she looks almost like she might actually listen. For a moment, Yoona thinks she’s gotten through, feeling a fragile hope come to life in her chest. Maybe logic will win. Maybe caution will matter. Maybe—

“Where’s your spirit, Yoona?” Jinsol teases.

And just like that, Jiwoo’s attention shifts back toward Jinsol as easily as a compass needle finding north. The uncertainty vanishes from her expression, replaced by laughter.

Yoona feels the fragile hope collapse before it can take shape. Her hand drops away from Jiwoo’s wrist.

Of course. Of course it wasn’t enough.

“She’s right.” Haewon gestures toward Yoona with one hand. “We shouldn’t mess with something like this. I don’t care if the ritual is real or not, but I don’t want any trouble. They said stay away from the building, so let’s stay away.”

“Oh, come on!” Lily whines, slumping dramatically in her chair. She crosses her arms like a sulking child. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Yoona’s eyebrows meet.

Fun. That word again. She wants to scream. She wants to grab those notebooks and throw them on the table, make everyone read the entries that just stop mid-sentence. Make them understand that this isn’t theoretical.

But she knows it won’t matter. They’ll just find more and more excuses.

“I’m just saying,” Kyujin’s arms cross proudly, her head tilted like she’s ready to argue her case in court, “if people are really disappearing, shouldn’t we try to figure out why? Isn’t that, like, our responsibility?”

“And the kitty cat’s right!” Jinsol strides over to Kyujin and throws an arm around her shoulders. “We’re the occult club, aren’t we? If anyone’s going to investigate, it should be us. If we don’t, who will?”

“The police?” Haewon deadpans.

“Come on, guys, this is what we do!” Lily stands up, shaking Haewon’s shoulder. Her energy is infectious enough to draw matching laughter from Kyujin and Jinsol.

Yoona watched this happen a dozen times before, in this room and others. Groups make decisions this way: one person pushes, another agrees, a third reframes the risk as an adventure instead of danger. Before long, caution starts sounding like cowardice. Hesitation becomes the enemy. And anyone who tries to pump the brakes gets labeled boring, paranoid, no fun.

And if that’s the case, fine. Yoona will forever be the boring one.

She shakes her head firmly. “I’m out.”

“Boooooo,” Jinsol groans, dragging the sound out dramatically as she throws her head back. Then, recovering with a sly grin, she shifts her attention to Jiwoo. “How about you, Jiwoo? You coming?”

All eyes turn to Jiwoo at once.

“Yeah, okay, let’s do it.”

Yoona’s breath catches in her throat.

“Jiwoo?”

“Everyone’s coming, unnie.”

“Not me.”

Her fingers curl tightly at her sides, nails pressing into her palms again. Her jaw clenches as she forces herself to look away.

Because she knows. She knows Jiwoo’s not doing this for herself. She’s doing this because Jinsol asked.

As if summoned by the thought, Jinsol walks toward her with all the confidence in the world and slings an arm around her stiff shoulders.

“Now, what do you say?” she teases, her eyes hinting a challenge.

Yoona’s gaze flicks instinctively toward Jiwoo. And Jiwoo is looking at her. Not at Jinsol. Not at Lily bouncing in her seat. Not at Kyujin’s stupidly excited grin.

If Yoona refuses, Jiwoo will still go. Of course she will. Everyone else but Haewon already decided, and Jiwoo won’t ever be the dissenting voice. She’ll follow them down whatever hallway they choose, whispering about ghosts and locked doors and rituals that probably, hopefully, won’t work anyway.

And Yoona will go home alone.

She’ll sit in her dorm room refreshing her phone, checking the group chat for updates that may or may not come. Wondering if they’re okay, if Jiwoo’s laughing at something Jinsol said.

“Fine.” She shrugs Jinsol’s arm off her shoulders with more force than necessary.

“Wait, really?” Haewon’s voice cracks slightly with disbelief. “Yoona, you were literally just—”

Jinsol grins. “It’s five-to-one, Haewon-unnie.”

Haewon stares at the group for a long moment, her jaw working like she’s chewing through arguments and discarding them one by one. Then she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and crosses her arms tightly across her chest.

“Okay.”

“You’re coming?” Lily asks, eyes lighting up with barely contained glee.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Haewon’s tone is resigned, bitter almost. “Someone has to make sure you idiots don’t get yourselves killed.”

“I mean that’s why I’m here,” Kyujin pipes up, pointing to herself with her two thumbs.

Haewon looks at her for a long moment, then reaches over and pats her head. “Sure, kiddo.”

Kyujin swats her hand away immediately, scowling. “I’m being serious! I can help!”

“I know you can,” Haewon says softly.

“So when are we doing this?” Lily asks. “Tonight?”

“Why wait?” Jinsol pulls her phone out to check the time. “It’s Friday. No one has early classes tomorrow. Might as well get it over with.”

Yoona’s stomach tightens. They’re being too hasty about this. Too reckless.

“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t—”

“Let’s meet up around eleven,” Lily interrupts, not hearing her. Or maybe just not listening. “That gives us time to eat and grab what we need. Flashlights, extra batteries—”

“My new camera!” Kyujin interjects.

Haewon runs a hand through her hair. “We’ll end up in so much trouble if the admin sees that video.”

“Who cares?” Jinsol waves a hand dismissively, grinning at Kyujin. “Let the kid do what she wants.”

“Don’t call me kid!” Kyujin snaps, though there’s no real heat in it.

Jinsol just sticks her tongue out playfully, then her eyes slide over to Yoona with sudden realization. “Wait. This is your first time coming with us, isn’t it?”

Heat creeps up the back of Yoona’s neck.

“Yeah,” she tries to keep her voice neutral.

“Oh yeah, that’s right!” Lily’s eyes are wide with genuine surprise. “I didn’t think you’d ever actually come on one of these.”

“Character development,” Jinsol says with a grin, slinging an arm around Yoona’s shoulders before she can protest. “I’m touched. Truly. What changed your mind?”

Yoona’s gaze flicks involuntarily toward Jiwoo, then away just as quickly. “I don’t know.”

But it’s too late. Jiwoo catches the glance before Yoona can fully look away. Their eyes meet briefly, and Jiwoo’s expression softens. She offers a warm smile.

And Yoona hates herself a little more for how much that smile makes it feel worth it.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this.”

Haewon’s breath fogs the cold night air as she speaks. The chill pushes through the thin lining of her jacket, even as she tugs the zipper up a little higher. She should’ve worn another layer or grabbed her scarf. She should’ve insisted they do this during daylight hours, if at all.

“Because we’re the occult club, duh,” Jinsol quips. She walks backward for a few steps just to face the group, flipping her baseball cap around so it sits backward on her head. “It’s kind of in the job description.”

Haewon stares at her flatly, unamused.

The arts building looms ahead of them like a hulking silhouette against the cloudy sky. Most of its windows are dark and smeared with grime, but a few reflect the weak glow of the nearby streetlamps.

Haewon slows her pace without meaning to, feeling sick to her stomach the closer they get.

The air just feels wrong. Even the wind seems to avoid the courtyard in front of the building, leaving the trees around it motionless.

She checks her watch: 11:38 PM. Twenty-two minutes to midnight.

“Is it too late to turn around?” Yoona’s voice cuts through the quiet, and Haewon glances back immediately.

Yoona trails a few steps behind the group, her posture tense and closed off. Her eyes move constantly, toward every shadow, between each member of the group, never settling anywhere for long.

Haewon stops in her tracks and waits for Yoona to catch up, hoping to offer some semblance of reassurance she doesn’t know she can give her.

And when the latter reaches her, she puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey. If you want to go home, it’s okay.”

She means it.

Frankly, Haewon would love for someone to take her up on that offer. So she can have an excuse to call the whole thing off and go home.

But Yoona’s gaze slides past her. Toward the front of the group.

Haewon follows the line of sight and sees Jiwoo up ahead, arm looped casually through Jinsol’s as they walk together. Jiwoo’s leaning into her slightly, comfortable in a way that makes something click into place in Haewon’s mind.

When she looks back at Yoona, the other girl has already looked away with her jaw tight and expression carefully blank.

Oh.

“Would it kill them to make this place less serial-killer-y?” Jiwoo’s voice rings out ahead, obviously nervous and trying to play it off as a joke. She presses closer to Jinsol as they approach the building’s entrance, sweeping her flashlight nervously across the bushes lining the walkway. Every shadow seems to make her flinch.

Behind them, Kyujin lifts her camera.

Click.

“You’re seriously taking pictures right now?” Jiwoo asks without turning around.

Kyujin doesn’t even look up from her viewfinder. “This lighting is incredible.”

Click.

“Kyujin.”

“If we get murdered, at least the photos will go viral.” Kyujin finally lowers the camera.

Jiwoo spins around immediately. “Can you not say that?”

Kyujin rolls her eyes, tucking her camera into her pocket. “It’s not like we’re summoning a demon. Worst-case scenario, it’s a dud. We go home scared but disappointed.”

“Or someone goes missing,” Yoona mutters under her breath.

“What Yoona-unnie said…” Jiwoo’s grip on Jinsol’s arm tightens visibly.

Jinsol grins and pinches Jiwoo’s cheek lightly. “What? You scared?”

“Not when I’m with you, unnie.” Jiwoo smiles as her gaze locks on Jinsol. Her voice comes out steadier now, almost playful.

Haewon’s eyes flick to Yoona. The other girl’s jaw is clenched so tightly Haewon can almost hear her teeth grinding.

“Can we just get this over with?” Yoona snaps suddenly, her voice clipped. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Someone’s eager,” Lily teases, bouncing on her toes as she falls into step beside Yoona. She nudges her shoulder playfully before going on a whole spiel about the book she’s currently reading. Perhaps to distract Yoona. Haewon mentally thanks her for that.

The group moves toward the entrance, footsteps crunching over frost-laden leaves scattered across the pavement. Haewon notices Kyujin slow slightly behind them and the camera comes out again. The flash illuminates the entrance doors briefly—peeling paint, rusted handles, a chain that’s been cut and left dangling—before the darkness swallows it again.

She keeps her eyes on the dark doorway ahead, already thinking about proper exit routes, figuring out how quickly they could leave if something goes wrong. Old habits never die, she supposes.

When Jinsol pushes the door open, the hinges groan in protest. They step inside one by one, and the silence swallows them immediately.

Haewon glances over her shoulder to see Kyujin holding the camera at chest level, recording as they move deeper inside. She pans the camera across the stairwell, pausing on the graffiti, water stains, and what looks like the skeletal remains of what used to be a bulletin board.

“Entering the haunted arts building at 11:42 PM.” Kyujin narrates like a documentary host. “Occult club members showing remarkable bravery in the face of possible doom.”

Their flashlights cut thin tunnels through the dark as they approach the stairwell. Each step creaks under their weight. The building announcing every movement they make. The air grows colder as they climb. By the second landing, Haewon can see her breath fogging in front of her face.

That’s not right.

The building shouldn’t be this cold. Even abandoned structures trap some residual warmth during the day, hold onto it through the night. But this place feels hollow.

“Everyone still here?” she calls back quietly, needing to hear their voices.

“Unfortunately.”
“Yep!”
“All good.”
“I’m here.”
“Right behind you,” the others call back.

Haewon counts the flashlight beams. One, two, three, four, five. Six including hers. Everyone’s accounted for. Good. That’s good.

She glances over her shoulder again, and her pulse skips when the beam of her flashlight catches nothing but the empty stairwell below them. No movement. No sound except their own breathing and footsteps.

So why does it feel like something’s watching?

“Did anyone else hear that?” Yoona’s voice shakes from the middle of the group. Her flashlight jerks toward the landing above them.

“Probably just the building settling,” Jinsol jokes.

“Or the ghosts welcoming us,” Kyujin adds, though the camera she’s holding tilts toward the same shadowed corner Yoona pointed at.

Lily steps ahead and peeks around the corner of the second-floor hallway. “Or maybe it’s the boogeyman.”

“Unnie,” Haewon hisses. “Not the time.”

Lily only grins and falls back into step.

By the time they reach the third floor, the temperature drops again so suddenly that Haewon feels it deep in her bones. The windows lining the corridor are filthy, streaked with grime and splattered with what looks like old, dried stains. Their reflections stare back, faces elongated and hollow-eyed.

“Charming.” Jinsol shines her flashlight across the floor. “Love what they’ve done with the place. Real homey.”

Kyujin chuckles. “Right? Add a few cobwebs and a fog machine and they could charge admission.”

Haewon barely registers the jokes. Her attention moves automatically between the others.

Lily leads the group, her flashlight swinging from side to side. She stops at every broken classroom window they pass, shining her light into the gaps as though she’s daring something to appear. At one point, Haewon swears she sees movement behind one of them. She forces herself to look away.

Yoona trails just behind Lily, gripping the back of her jacket. Every creak makes her flinch. Her eyes are shut tight, just fully trusting where Lily would take her. Haewon can see tears brimming at the edges, threatening to spill. God, maybe she’s been too hard on her.

Jinsol, by contrast, looks completely at ease. Hands shoved in her pockets, walking beside Kyujin. She even leans into the camera frame when Kyujin pans the lens across the hallway.

“Tonight we investigate the haunted third-floor bathroom where multiple mysterious disappearances allegedly occurred,” Kyujin narrates.

Jinsol leans closer to the camera. “If we die, please like and subscribe.”

And Jiwoo has abandoned any pretense of bravery. At some point during the climb, she’d quietly migrated to Haewon’s side, and now her hand clutches Haewon’s sleeve with a grip that tightens with every unfamiliar sound.

Haewon doesn’t mind. Honestly, she’s relieved.

It’s better that Jiwoo stays close. It’s easier to keep her safe this way.

From what? Haewon isn’t so sure.

The hallway stretches out before them like a long, narrow throat.

At the end, the bathroom door waits.

The paint has peeled away in long, curling strips, exposing layers of sickly green and brown underneath. Rust creeps across the metal handle, the surface dull and corroded except for one narrow streak near the keyhole that glints under their flashlights.

Lily reaches it first, of course.

“It’s locked.” She rattles the handle, the metal clanking loudly in the empty hallway. She glances over her shoulder at the others.

“Like they said they would,” Yoona mumbles.

Kyujin steps forward, slinging her camera over her shoulder as she crouches beside the handle. She digs into her bag and produces a small roll of lockpicking tools. “My time to shine.”

“You’re way too prepared for this,” Haewon says, watching Kyujin slide a thin metal pick into the lock.

“You want to get through life, you need skills.”

Behind her, the small camera clipped to her bag strap continues recording, its little red light blinking steadily.

Evidence, Haewon thinks distantly. If something happens, at least there will be evidence.

Jinsol nudges Kyujin lightly with her knee. “That’s a niche skill,” she says with an amused chuckle, “but I respect it. Let me know next time you’re robbing a house.”

“You’d be my first call.”

Haewon doesn’t join in on the laughter. Her gaze shifts to the others again: Lily and Jinsol watching Kyujin expectantly, Yoona’s face pale and drawn, Jiwoo’s trembling grip still on her arm.

A metallic click echoes through the hallway.

Kyujin straightens with a satisfied grin. “Voila.”

She reaches for the handle and opens the door.

The air from the bathroom pours into the hallway and wraps around them instantly, far colder than the rest of the building. Colder than the stairwell, than anything natural.

Haewon feels it crawl through the layers of her jacket like icy fingers pressing against her ribs. The smell follows not even a second later, sharp and metallic, thick enough that she almost tastes it at the back of her throat.

Jiwoo recoils beside her, her free hand flying up to cover her nose and mouth.

“Is that…” She trails off, her wide eyes darting toward Yoona for confirmation.

But Yoona doesn’t answer. She doesn't even look at Jiwoo. Instead, she takes a shaky step back. Her face has gone completely pale, lips pressed so tightly together that Haewon can see the muscles in her jaw trembling.

“Oh my god—what is that smell?” Lily pinches her nose. Her face twists in immediate disgust, eyes squinting as she backs away. “It didn’t smell like this earlier— I mean, yeah, it was musty, but not—” she gags, cutting herself off, “not like this.”

“Okay, this is bad news.” Haewon steps forward and grabs Kyujin by the arm before the girl can move any closer to the doorway. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Her heart is pounding hard enough that she can feel it everywhere. Every instinct she has is screaming the same message: something is very wrong here.

This doesn’t feel like their usual outings, the silly late-night explorations that end with Lily squealing at a raccoon or Jinsol inventing ghost stories for the camera.

This isn’t… safe.

“Wait, wait, really?” Jinsol plants her hands on her hips and takes a step toward the open doorway, peering into the darkness beyond it with a disappointed frown. “We came all this way, and now we’re just going to leave?”

“Yes!”

“Unnie, that smell is…” Jiwoo falters as her grip tightens on Haewon’s sleeve until Haewon can feel her nails through the fabric.

Yoona finishes the thought with a whisper. “That’s blood.”

“Old buildings smell like this all the time!” Jinsol tries to reason out. She sweeps her flashlight across the metal hinges and rust-streaked frame of the door. “Look at those hinges. That’s just rust.”

Haewon stares at her, incredulous.

She’s rationalizing, so desperate to keep going, to see this through, that she’s willing to explain away every warning sign the universe is throwing at them. And the worst part is, she can see it working. Can see Kyujin becoming curious again. Can see Lily getting excited.

“You don’t actually believe that.”

“I don’t not believe it.”

Before Haewon can say anything else, Kyujin breaks free from her grip.

“Kyujin—!”

Haewon lunges after her, her hand shooting forward on instinct, but Kyujin is faster. She slips through the doorway and the door slams shut behind her.

“Kyujin, open the door!” Haewon shouts, panic showing in her voice as she shrugs off Jiwoo's grip and storms forward. She pounds on the door with her fist. “Get out of there. Now!”

“It’s not that bad,” Kyujin’s voice is muffled and infuriatingly casual. “Calm down. Let me try out the ritual.”

Haewon’s fists freeze mid-pound. Her forehead drops forward against the door. She wants to kick the door down and drag Kyujin out by her collar and shake some sense into her.

But she can’t. She can’t get in.

“Kyujin,” she says, forcing her voice to sound steady. “At least let us in.”

“No.”

Haewon stumbles back, her breath catching. That didn’t sound right. That’s not her. Not just her.

“Did you hear that?” she turns to the others.

Yoona is already backing away, her flashlight shaking violently in her grip. Her eyes stay fixed on the door.

Jiwoo doesn't seem to register the wrongness in Kyujin’s voice, but she notices Yoona’s retreat. She steps closer immediately, her fingers brushing Yoona’s arm before gripping it firmly.

“It’s fine, unnie,” Jiwoo whispers. “Kyujin will be fine. Right, Haewon-unnie?”

Haewon can’t answer. She can’t say what she doesn’t mean.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen.” Lily answers for her instead.

The campus bell begins to toll.

Dong.

“One…” Haewon hears from behind the door.

Dong.

“Two…”

“Three… Four… Five…”

Haewon counts along silently, her lips moving without a sound.

Dong.

The silence that follows is so absolute it feels suffocating.

The cold creeps deeper into Haewon’s bones, stealing the breath from her lungs. Around her, Jinsol and Lily’s easy confidence finally cracks. Their expressions shift, laughter dying abruptly.

“Kyujin?” Haewon’s voice cracks as the cold tightens its grip around her throat.

Nothing.

Nothing but silence.

Her heart pounds in her ears as the seconds stretch. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

She moves to the door, her hands fumbling with the handle. It doesn’t budge.

“This isn’t funny, Kyujin!”

Jinsol steps forward, her jaw tight.

“Move,” she says, her voice unusually hard. She kicks the door. The impact echoes down the hallway like a gunshot.

“Kyujin!”

The door doesn’t give. It doesn’t even shudder.

Haewon drops to her knees, snatching up Kyujin’s toolkit with trembling hands. Her fingers are numb from the cold, clumsy as she fumbles with the lockpicks. She tries to remember how Kyujin did it—the angle, the pressure—but her hands won’t stop shaking and the picks keep slipping.

“Damn it,” she mutters, her voice breaking.

She’s supposed to know how to fix things. She’s supposed to be the one who keeps everyone safe.

Jinsol continues her assault, foot slamming against the wood repeatedly. Lily joins in, panic evident in every kick. Haewon straightens on shaking legs and throws her weight against the door alongside them. Her shoulder screams in protest but she doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. Kyujin is in there and they have to get her out, they have to—

Finally, with a deafening crack, the door bursts open.

They stumble forward into freezing air that bites at exposed skin like teeth. Haewon catches herself against the doorframe, gasping.

Frost crawls along the cracked tiles. The window is sealed tight, bordered shut by what looks like hastily nailed wooden planks.

The smell hits next. It’s rancid, choking, worse than the metallic tang from earlier. It’s rot and copper, a putrid stench that claws at Haewon’s throat. She gags, pressing a sleeve against her nose.

“Kyujin?” Her voice comes out small, trembling as her flashlight sweeps over the empty room.

The bathroom is eerily still.

No movement nor sound. No Kyujin crouched in the corner with her camera, grinning about how she got them good.

Behind her, Yoona’s frozen in the doorway, face bloodless, eyes wide and unblinking. Jiwoo stumbles backward with a choked sound. Lily’s usual brightness has drained entirely, leaving her pale and shaking. Even Jinsol’s usual bravado falters, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides.

Haewon’s flashlight lands on the shards of glass scattered across the floor near the far wall. In the center of the debris lies Kyujin’s camera. The lens is shattered into fractures, the body dented like something struck it with tremendous force.

Haewon stares at it with her jaw clenched.

Where is Kyujin?