Chapter Text
It’s no use noting that there’s something different about the master’s return. While hunting parties aren’t particularly notable other than the stress from an added workload, this time Kun feels an extra bit of something cynister in the air. And he’s not alone.
“Never seen a crowd quite like this before,” whisper some of the cooks to themselves.
Privately, Kun agrees, though he has no one to chat about it too. Dejun is nothing less of a blur as he runs from duty to duty. Most of the time he barely acknowledges Kun’s existence, nodding at him as he runs past, his arms laden with heavy trays. Everyone has double duties now, including Kun. He wakes up an hour earlier, silently tiptoeing into some of the guest rooms to light fires or carry laundry away.
He doesn’t mean to spy, but these ‘guests’ have brought quite a bit more luggage than usual, as if they’re preparing for an extra long hunting season. Could it be because of that horrible cry in the night that happened a month before? Possibly, but there have been wolves in these parts before and never has anything seemed so off.
The other thing that has changed is Doyoung. Kun hardly sees him. He’s no longer in and out of the staff quarters criticizing meals on his young master’s behalf. Never in the hallways with his trademark scowl. It’s like he and the young master have disappeared off the face of the earth. Except they’re still inside the mansion, sequestered away from the rest of the household, especially from the master and his guests. The only servants who are allowed in or out of that wing come from the mistress’s side of the house. Dejun doesn’t know what’s been going on over there. Neither apparently does Taeil. That, or he isn’t telling Kun.
Several days go by just like this. Kun has so far managed not to run into the master directly, though he’s definitely heard his booming voice from afar. Instead, he cautiously surveys the men who arrived with him. Most of them are older, middle-aged, rugged with the air of very minor nobility. One at least, according to gossip, is the nephew of a nearby baron. Friends and neighbors built from the same ilk as the master himself, and each of them hungry for the hunt.
A young man stumbles across Kun one day when he’s doubled over a large basin of basin scrubbing the linens. Kun would normally pay him no mind. Servants come with their masters all the time, though this one is carrying an armful of firearms which he drops nearby with a huff of overexertion.
Kun ignores him.
The man gives him a careful glance but then sinks onto the dirt next to the pile of weapons, which now definitely has Kun’s attention.
“Can I… help you…?”
Gratefully, the man relaxes into a large smile. “If you can, thanks. Looking for some cleaning cloth. This pile here are the backups, so none of them got cleaned properly after the last hunt, whenever that was.”
Kun looks around. What the man is looking for should be in the nearby shed. He says so using the fewest words possible, assuming this will put an end to the matter.
But the visitor immediately proves him wrong. “Thanks. Hey, I’m Jaehyun. What’s your name?”
Kun narrows his eyes. “I’m Kun.”
“Nice to meet you. Hey, well, maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah,” says Kun dispiritedly. “Maybe.”
There’s an understanding around the estate that visiting servants are not friends , nor are the employees on the estate expected to cater to them beyond basic requirements. This isn’t a life of leisure. Nobody is here on vacation.
So Kun sees Jaehyun around periodically throughout the next few days but he doesn’t respond to the man’s friendly smiles of greeting.
He feels Taeil asking him once, why . Kun shrugs. Why bother?
He’s thinking more about the pile of firearms he sees Jaehyun often wiping down like they’re more precious than an infant. Thoughts of the ‘hunt’ keep haunting him more than they should. The full moon looms close and the whispers have started anew about the howling one month ago. Kun’s stomach is unsettled. He doesn’t like it one bit. Kun’s job is simple and there shouldn’t be anything bothering him.
Still, one evening the night before the hunt is set to begin, he finds himself in the hallway of the young master’s wing.
Kun pauses. He doesn’t remember coming this way. He can’t recall how he got here. His feet have done something strange.
Instinctively, he looks around for Taeil, but the ghost isn’t here.
Kun should turn around. He absolutely, definitely should turn around and return to his room.
Instead, he treads forward.
The door to the wing is open, nobody guarding it.
Kun swears the floorbears give a squeak beneath his weight but there’s no response, no calls to halt. Nothing holding him back.
But from deep inside he can hear sounds, soft and pained. He takes another step, then another. And another.
Finally, somebody from within speaks. It’s so soft Kun trains his ears to overhear. This should not be allowed. Kun has no right to be here. And normally, he would never even dare. But that unsettling feeling he’s carried for days grounds his feet and his will and he continues forward.
“One night. In one night!” somebody is whispering desperately. It might be Doyoung. It should be, but Kun doesn’t think the pitch is correct.
“I know!” returns a growling voice. It’s Sicheng.
Somebody else speaks too low for Kun to overhear, but this time it’s definitely Doyoung.
“You have to do something.”
“Like what?!”
“Like leave?” says the first voice.
“I can’t do that.”
“Then you know what’s going to happen.”
There’s a pause, then Doyoung whispers low. “We don’t know that anything is going to happen.”
The first person sighs. Kun is starting to think the voice sounds familiar but he can’t place it without a face. He hears footsteps then, and in his panic misses what’s said next. But someone is stalking toward the door where Kun is currently blocking the way. And there aren’t even any ghosts to protect him.
Kun flees for two whole seconds. Then he realizes how ridiculous this action is. It’s too late. The door behind him is flung open before he’s even out of sight. Kun stops, a dejected look on his face, like one who knows he’s been caught. If this is the end of his career, then so be it. Kun doesn't haven’t anything to pack, he can be gone from the estate in minutes.
He stares at his feet. Behind him, heavy stomps echo down the corridor but they don’t slow down until they’re almost upon him.
Kun looks up, startled to see none other than… Jaehyun.
But Jaehyun doesn’t seem surprised to see him. He slows his steps, eyes glowing darkly, and he says, “Kun?” No hint of a smile this time, but he does raise his eyebrows half a beat before glancing over his shoulder.
“Persuade him, won’t you? Please?”
Then he disappears down the corridor leaving Kun alone to ponder just what he was trying to say.
Kun steps forward, back into the room where Sicheng awaits.
He too seems to be expecting him, though Doyoung rolls his eyes and turns away with an aggravated huff. Nobody speaks. It gives Kun time to inspect the room. There’s an empty suitcase on the foot of the bed, like somebody dragged it out expecting to be filled, but there is nothing inside of it, and nothing else in the room is out of place. Whatever Jaehyun expects Sicheng to flee from, Sicheng hasn’t budged.
Belatedly, Taeil creeps into the scene. Kun feels his presence behind his shoulder blades, as if the ghost is trying to hide.
Sicheng suddenly scoffs, almost merrily. “Good evening, Taeil.” Not yet a word to acknowledge Kun.
This he will remedy. But first he asks Doyoung to remove the suitcase. Sicheng’s servant, or is he a friend, takes it without a word and disappears into the second room of the suite. All of a sudden, it’s just the two of them alone in the room with a ghost.
Kun shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Sicheng eyes him from his armchair where he’s piled under even more blankets than the last time Kun saw him here. In any normal circumstance, Kun would have been dismissed instantly. He knows, however, that that isn’t going to happen.
Sicheng’s vacant stare gives way to ease. “You’ve met Jaehyun then.”
“Yes,” Kun replies.
“And what has Jaehyun been up to? I should ask.”
“He’s… he’s been prioritizing quite a lot of the guests’ firearms.”
“Which leads you to believe what, exactly?”
That’s entirely too many questions, the answers to such questions being things Kun hasn’t yet wanted to acknowledge. Kun grew up on this estate, he was educated on this estate, however inadequately. He’s been trained to keep his nose down and not ask any questions, better yet, never to answer them. Still, he is not unintelligent. He can add and subtract sums. He can add and subtracts from the facts. Even better, his intuition tonight is all alight.
“That…you… seem to be in some danger.”
Kun thinks of Sicheng’s illness, the chill that always surrounds him, the way he hides from the world. The words of the visiting doctor, his mother’s almost crushing despair. His father’s hate. The howls from the last full moon. Sicheng’s ruined clothes.
Sicheng laughs once, his head turned away and Kun watches the barest bones of a smile flicker for a moment before becoming obscured once again.
“You should make yourself scarce for a few days, Kun.”
“Excuse me?”
That wasn’t what Kun expected to hear.
“Danger is about, isn't that what you have foreseen?”
Kun shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. Why does Sicheng think any of that matters to Kun? Unless Sicheng thinks he’s clairvoyant.
“I don’t foresee things, sir,” he says, digging in the sir part of it because for once it makes him indignant. Not a good tone to take with the young master of the house, surely, but Kun is too taken aback to care.
“You may not see things, but your friends certainly do.”
He means the ghosts. That’s the only thing Kun can gather, especially with Taeil practically clutching him from behind.
Kun stands up tall, as tall as he can. “I don’t quite know what you mean, sir. If there is anything I can help you with, you could of course ask it of me but-”
“Ask you for what, to take your own life for granted?” Sicheng tuts, and there’s a mean glint to his eyes, his lips sneering as he speaks. “Don’t you know danger when you see it? Or don’t you know why every cold and dead nonliving thing in this monstrous estate has already claimed you as their own.”
A hideous chill streaks down Kun’s back. His blood runs cold, his breath caught tight..
Taeil is practically shrieking into his mind, no no no no no . Denying Sicheng’s words, denying the sneers. But fanning his fears.
The ghosts, his friends for all these years, his companions. They sought him out as a child, and they’ve stood by him for over a decade. They’re Kun’s protectors, Kun’s guardians. There’s not a claim at stake, they’re not frightening, and they’re not monsters. They belong to Kun, not the other way around!
He doesn’t realize how long he’s been shaking his head, throwing off Sicheng’s words, almost throwing off Taeil behind him. For one horrible second, Kun feels Taeil like a corporeal being, feels his cold hands dragging on Kun’s arms, his head resting against his back, as if bowing in shame. A further plea not to listen to Sicheng, not to recognize the weight of his accusations.
And suddenly Kun thinks back to all the times he could have died in this place. At the hands of Mrs Yang’s nephew. When he almost tripped all the way down the stairs. Kun tries in vain to shut off his memories but more of them fly out unbidden, as only bad memories that have been kept hidden too long will cruelly escape.
That time when he fell asleep with a candle lit, waking only to the blurry memory of his bedsheets beginning to catch fire. Kun can’t remember how the flames were extinguished, only that he must have squashed them quick enough. Kun did that, right? It was Kun that did that. Right? But he didn’t have a single cup of water in his room that night, and the bed was clearly wet when his brain resolved what had happened.
And that isn’t even the worst of his memories…
Kun is practically shivering when Doyoung comes back into the room. He sees him in his peripheral vision and shakes his head once, clearing his head fully.
Doyoung stares at his warily, but Sicheng only says, “It’s late. I want to go to bed. Goodnight, Kun.”
So Kun takes that as his cue to leave. He turns around, slowly at first, measuring his steps evenly in the corridor, slowly. Not one to panic, he refuses to panic.
But as he retreats farther and farther from Sicheng’s wing of the house, his steps begin to speed up, faster and faster, more hurried, more stuttering. He trips once but doesn’t fall down, on and on until he’s flat out running up the last set of stairs and down the hallway to his bedroom door. He slams it shut. Kun has never slammed anything in his life.
Inside his room, everything is dark but for the moonlight of the almost full moon casting a frightening shadow through the deadened tree which towers over this side of the house. Kun stands with his back to the door, heart racing and breath overflowing as the scraggly branches crawl and wriggle against the floor next to his bed, like hands coming to snatch his soul.
The ghosts, no, the ghosts aren’t like that at all. They wouldn’t take him anywhere, they want him to remain. They want him to live.
It’s the only thing that can calm him down. Kun shudders across the room, flings himself onto his bed, and then buries himself face down in his pillow.
They must want him to live, they really must. Otherwise, why save his life so many times? Kun should have died so many times, he should have by now belonged to the dead. And yet, he’s still alive. He’s still blissfully alive.
As the last of Kun’s fears bleed out into the bedsheets, and sleep comes to take him, one last flickering thought crosses his mind: the ghosts have only ever sought out Kun, until now. If Sicheng knows them too, knows them better, knows them by name, then what does that mean for Sicheng? Are not both of them, somehow, meant to die?
Morning dawns bright and quiet. A pale beam of light stretches across Kun’s bed. Somewhere from beyond his window, a bird chirps. And Kun is suddenly much too alert.
Something’s wrong.
He dresses in a rush, barely getting his legs into the right holes of his pants and toeing on his shoes before he hurries down the stairs. He didn’t sleep in, he couldn’t have. But it’s much too quiet. Mornings during a hunt are chaotic by nature. Every guest and twice as many servants should be active. The house should have turned into a beehive by now.
Kun registers the chill of Taeil’s morning greeting as he dives down the stairs, near to running but careful all the same. He hits the ground floor and blazes toward the kitchen, feet skidding in the doorway where he peers in breathless.
Dejun’s amused face is the first thing that greets him. He frowns, confused.
Kun cries out, “The hunt? Are they already gone!?”
His voice echoes throughout the large stone room. Several of the cooks look over in annoyance. But none of them are looking stressed. Nobody is rushed. In fact, they look almost too slow-paced. There are extra baskets of morning loaves still waiting to be delivered. A little girl whose job it is to keep the stove lit actually yawns from where she is perched on a stool by the barely flickering flames.
Dejun follows Kun’s gaze, then offers a meek, “Nobody is awake yet.”
“They’re sleeping in?”
Dejun shrugs. “Guess they aren’t in a hurry to get out there just yet.”
“But-”
He stops himself. The day of the hunt is always a bustling affair. Breakfast comes fast and early as the guests race to get outdoors before the sun gets too high in the sky. But not, apparently, today. Today’s hunt is no daytime affair. Which can only mean one of two things. One, that it’s been cancelled. Two, that their prey hasn’t yet come onto the scene.
Kun turns abruptly around. “I need to go.”
“Kun? Kun, wait-”
Kun doesn’t wait.
Unlike the day before, he knows which way his feet are moving. He practically apparates in the corridor before the young master’s suite. He bangs on the door to the first chamber. Belatedly, he realizes his presumption, but instead of removing himself, he sighs, shakes his shoulders as if to get ahold of his wits, then knocks again, gently.
No one answers. So Kun turns the handle, not entirely shocked when the door opens up to him. It creeks on its hinge, revealing again… nothing. And no one.
“Hello?” Kun calls. “Young Master?”
He takes a careful step inside. There’s an early morning cloudcover blanketing the estate outside, casting a pall shadow through the windows of the room. Despite the eerie darkness, there’s not a single lamp shining in the whole of the suite.
“Doyoung?” Kun tries again, pushing open the next door, a bedroom. “S-Sicheng?” The room is also dark, also empty.
The suitcase he saw last night is still there though, still unpacked. Only one room remains on the other side of the bedroom. Fighting the urge to flee, like he shouldn’t be here at all snoopping around, Kun crosses the room and checks the handle. For once, the door doesn’t budged.
Kuns frowns, backing away from the locked door. By its appearance it can’t be more than a locked closet. For now at least, Sicheng will keep his secrets. But a quick look around the main bedroom reveals there’s nothing else in the room that’s obviously out of place. And something about the emptiness of the place is telling Kun that the situation is urgent. He leaves the rooms as quickly as he came, backtracking down the hallway.
Kun pauses only long enough to debate what he should be doing next. Go to the mistress? Spy on the master? Find Jaehyun? Each of those options would require at least a quick walkthrough toward the other side of the manor where Kun rarely goes and at this hour of the day he should have no right to do so. It’s only a matter of time before he runs into someone who knows better, or even worse, Mrs Yang. While she hasn’t bothered with him much these days, that doesn’t mean she isn’t still capable of demanding to know what he’s doing, and why.
He turns toward the mistress’s wing of the house when Taeil shows up. But it’s different than usual. Not merely his presence felt, but similar to the evening before. Taeil feels more solid . He puts a cold hand around Kun’s wrist, and Kun freezes not only at the contact but at the way he can feel Taeil’s five actual fingers clinging to him, pleading, tugging Kun in another direction.
So Kun lets him.
They don’t see anyone else in the hallways, nor on the stairs going back to Kun’s bedroom. Kun can imagine why not. They’ve encountered nearly every manor ghost Kun has ever met, collectiving them one by one as Taeil drags him back through the servants wing, and into his room. Kun’s never felt so ‘protected’. Even if he were to trip right now, he wouldn’t budge or even tip more than a finger’s hair, so dense is the bubble of safety around him.
The panic only sets in when he’s back in his room, sitting on his bed. Taeil’s fingers retreat and half the ghosts remain on the other side of his door, as if standing guard.
“Why… what’s happening?” he asks everyone, no one.
Taeil won’t answer him.
As his heart rate increases, Kun looks at his wrist, as if he should be able to see the imprint of Taeil’s fingers. There’s nothing there, only the hollow impression of where they were.
“Where is Sicheng?” he asks again. “Did he leave?”
Kun swears he can almost see Taeil sitting on the bed beside him. Then he blinks, and the image disappears.
“Why can’t I leave here? Somebody will be looking for me soon enough.”
Kun closes his eyes, envisioning that fleeting appearance in his head of a tall, gaunt, but good looking young man with large eyes and concern written across his face.
Who… were you? Kun dares to wonder. The first time he’s ever really asked.
Taeil’s presence brightens, and Kun shoots his head to the right again lightning fast, eager for another glimpse of the ghost beside him.
Taeil’s smile is actually beautiful, but full of sorrow.
Someone who can’t help himself anymore.
Someone who just wants to keep you safe instead.
“What about Sicheng? Is he safe?” Kun refuses to think about himself, about this whole messed up manor, or about the ghosts are inexplicably trying their damnest to keep Kun from dying before his time.
For now , says Taeil, who sends him another image as well. It’s the face of another young man, just barely out of boyhood, laughing as he casts a fishing rod into a pond which in that day was higher and deeper than how it sits today. The stone bench looks brand new, and the engraving is fresh.
To J., with love and to the memories we’ll make. ~ D.S.
A girl sits upon the bench, dressed beautifully and laughing merrifly with a face that resembles Sicheng’s several generations removed.
“Jeno! Look!” She cries, holding up a drawing tablet with an excellent penciled likeness of Jeno’s face.
The boy turns and smiles in return, carefree in life just as he is in death. His servant’s attire is neat but still markedly less posh than the girl’s clothing, his face handsome but lacking her regal, if innocent bearing.
It’s then when Kun finally guesses who Jeno was in life, and why he was clearly killed much before his time.
So , Kun wonders, the image fading. Sicheng is safe.
And Taeil repeats, Yes, for now. And Taeil turns his head towards the sunshine beginning to peak through the clouds.
What he leaves unsaid however… is that’s he’s only safe until the sun sets.