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Dried leaves crunch under their shoes as they pick their way through the woods, nothing but the white circle cast by Wonwoo’s flashlight to guide them. The night is cool, but not quite enough to justify the restless chill that prickles up and down Soonyoung’s spine. Every leaf that falls prey to the breeze startles him into a new suit of skin, and he’s continually fighting the urge to grab at the edge of Wonwoo’s sleeve, or maybe his shoulder, or maybe his hand. This was a bad idea.
“Scared?” Wonwoo’s voice blends in with the darkness, and Soonyoung nearly shits himself when he hears it over the sour howl of the wind. He’s probably grinning like a total jackass. Soonyoung hates him.
“Of course not.”
A boldfaced lie. Wonwoo knows it’s a lie, too, and Soonyoung knows he knows, but his dignity is on the line if he doesn’t tell it anyway. It was Wonwoo’s idea to begin with: go check out an abandoned elementary school just shy of midnight when it gets a little closer to Halloween. Soonyoung’s self-preservation instincts told him to say no, but Wonwoo’s jawline and smoky voice told him to say yes. What was Soonyoung supposed to do, shut him down when he’s smiling all big like that? Yeah, right. But he can still hate him.
“You’re totally scared.”
“Am not.”
Something touches him on the side, and he sees his life flash before his eyes in a blinding platinum haze for three seconds before he realizes it’s Wonwoo’s hand. Only a harsh inhale saves him from screaming his lungs to a quick and bloodless death. Beside him, Wonwoo is laughing silently. Soonyoung can tell because he hears the occasional faint pant-cackle over the dry crumbling of the leaves.
“God,” Wonwoo groans. “I am hilarious.” Soonyoung rolls his eyes and is immediately bitter that Wonwoo can’t see him do it.
Before too long, the ring of Wonwoo’s light falls on something that isn’t a tree, and Soonyoung chokes on stale October air. There it is. The school. Wonwoo shines his pale little light all over everything they see. The little sign. The overrun garden plots. The empty walls. Soonyoung shivers at the way he whistles in awe. Physically, the thought of being anything but horrendously uncomfortable is not within the fathoms of his imagination. Wonwoo probably just isn’t a human person, and thinking that, he finds he isn’t all that surprised.
“Guess we better head in,” Wonwoo says not at all like it’s a chore and very much like it’s something he’s been waiting all twenty-one years of his life to do.
“Is this even legal? What if we get arrested?” Soonyoung tries to slow Wonwoo’s footsteps with his questions, but no dice. Wonwoo keeps stomping forward toward the entrance, and his only options are following or getting devoured by one of the haunted ghost werewolf monstrosities that must live around this neck of the woods. As it happens, being swallowed whole is not one of his particular interests.
“You know ghosts aren’t real, right?”
“Who said anything about ghosts?” A wavering tree branch makes Soonyoung flinch, and he’s relieved Wonwoo is in front of him. “Since when do ghosts arrest people?”
“Since when do you care about whether something is legal?” Their spotlight bounces around like a fleeing suspect while Wonwoo wrestles with the rusted door leading into the school. “You can’t fool me, Soonyoung. I know you’re about to piss yourself.” He nearly does at the screechy clang that echoes through the empty air when Wonwoo finally manages to pry the door open. Something about the way Wonwoo’s footsteps echo when he steps through the threshold and onto the tile makes him extremely queasy.
“Whatever.”
Soonyoung is sure it can’t have been this creepy when it was an actual operational educational facility, but by god, is he glad he wasn’t forced to endure his compulsory years of schooling as a child in a place that looks so much like it was ripped straight out of hell. It certainly doesn’t help that it’s in the middle of a forest nobody lives around anymore, all the streets within a mile radius crawling with low ivy and unsavory moss. There’s always something eerie about places no one goes anymore, even if the reasons are really good, like high risk of a fatal landslide crushing every building in the vicinity. It suddenly occurs to Soonyoung that landslides have no concept of time or obligation to sleep at night.
“Oh my god, Wonwoo,” he breathes. The halls seem very small right now, very cramped and very hard to escape should the entire hillside decide it wants to come take a nap on top of them. “What if we die?” Wonwoo snorts.
“We’re not going to die.”
“You can’t prove that. You really can’t.”
“Afraid the ghosts of the dead children are going to come haunt us for walking around in their school?” With their impending landslide-y death, Soonyoung had forgotten to think about that, or more accurately, forgotten to remind himself not to think about that. He hisses through his teeth.
“Shut the fuck up. I’m talking about how there could be a landslide literally whenever.”
“There’s not going to be a landslide.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I just do.”
“Bullshit!”
“Well, if we die, we’ll die together.” He takes a sharp turn down another hallway without warning, and Soonyoung almost screams again for the second time. Fortunately, he manages to hold it in.
“I would rather die than die together with you.”
“You’re a dumbass,” Wonwoo tells him. “And a big fat liar. Let’s go check out this classroom.”
The way the door creaks is just as disgustingly unsettling as Soonyoung expects, and he wishes he had brought his own flashlight so he wouldn’t have to stalk around behind Wonwoo in a constant state of nearly soiling himself out of fear. Fortunately, the classroom isn’t anywhere near as ominous as it could be. There are no half-shredded kindergarten drawings pinned up on a bulletin board nobody’s touched in thirty years, no vintage lunchboxes stuffed with morsels that have been rotting for longer than Soonyoung has been alive. There aren’t even any desks arranged in rows to give the semblance that phantom children are still showing up every day to learn their times tables. It’s just a perfectly empty classroom with one wall lined in chalkboard. Relief unlike anything Soonyoung has ever known floods his lungs while Wonwoo shines the flashlight around with a disappointed huff.
“Well, I guess there wouldn’t be anything in here,” he grumbles, “but I was hoping it would be at least a little creepier. I wanted you to scream.”
“Fat chance,” Soonyoung scoffs. Even if he had fifty dollars waiting on the other side for doing it, he still wouldn’t scream. Never. It’ll cost Wonwoo at least a million to get that kind of reaction out of him. Ignoring how he almost shrieked his lungs to an early grave eight times on their walk here.
“Let’s go check out the other rooms,” Wonwoo mutters around a chuckle, stalking back into the murky stretch of the hallway. Soonyoung’s fear of being alone in the dark in an abandoned school in the middle of the night forces him to follow.
The creepiest thing is probably the utter lack of sound. Room after tiny room, they creep in through dusty doorways only to find more of the same bland emptiness, but it chills him how they can’t hear anything coming from the forest outside, no wind or rustle of leaves or distant bypass of cars on the underused road. All they hear while they tread through the cobweb-cornered hallways is the click of their own heels on the dirty tile in bizarre unison, echoing dimly for only a few seconds before melting into the night that frames Wonwoo’s circle of light. Against Soonyoung’s will, goosebumps prickle up the skin under his sweater while they turn another corner in the hallway; he yawns to pretend he’s just tired.
“This is boring,” he whines. He tries to make it sound convincing, adds in another yawn for good measure, but he can’t tell if it’s working. “Why don’t we just leave?”
“Oh, please, Soonyoung,” Wonwoo barks, squatting and dropping his bag to the floor in front of him. “We haven’t even gotten to the fun stuff yet.” He turns his light to the bag’s contents while he rummages through it, plunging Soonyoung into a blisslessly ignorant darkness for three minutes, during which he vehemently wills himself not to grab onto Wonwoo’s shoulder.
“The fun stuff?” He wishes he could sound more uninterested than wary, but lady luck is not on his side, and neither is lady composure. After another moment of silent searching, Wonwoo stands back up and shines his light on a piece of machinery in his hand. It looks totally worthless. “What the fuck is that?”
“Ghost sensor.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “We’re gonna find ourselves some spirits tonight.”
“You’re a complete jackass.”
“And you’re a complete weenie.” He clicks a button on the side of the little contraption, and it beeps to quit consciousness, little red laser pointing out of one end while numbers flicker on a dim green screen. All it looks like is a piece of junk straight out of the eighties. “Just admit you’re afraid of ghosts, you baby man.”
“Why would there even be ghosts here? It’s not like any kids died in this school.” Wonwoo’s overhyped toaster makes a loud crackling sound that drenches Soonyoung’s entire body in dread. In classic fashion, Wonwoo laughs. “Fuck you.”
“Sh.” Wonwoo comes to a halt in the middle of the hallway, spotlight ghosting in circles over the distant recesses of its end while he points all around with his stupid ghost sensor. “It’s time to get serious.”
Soonyoung doesn’t know whether it’s worse to indulge Wonwoo and actually be quiet or to stake himself and turn rotisserie-style over an open flame, but his sheer shock at being seriously told to quiet down for a good old-fashioned ghost hunt dries his lips of any words they might have had regardless. While Wonwoo keeps up his weird business, Soonyoung just looks around, some strange mix between dread and tiredness settling thick on his shoulders. He turns around and peers into the leering blackness at the other end of the hallway, and when he does, he’s hit by the realization that there could be hundreds of spiders waiting down there and he would never even know. He thinks about saying something about it, but he doesn’t get the chance.
There is a noise.
It isn’t an echoing footstep because they aren’t moving, and it isn’t the ugly static click of Wonwoo’s worthless gizmo. Instead, it sounds like a drawn-out creak, like something’s just been bent close to broken, and it doesn’t sound like it came from anywhere close enough to be Wonwoo. Soonyoung shits his pants just a little bit before throwing his claws into Wonwoo’s arm and gripping for life.
“Did you hear that?” he whispers harshly. Foreign noise means they are not alone, and he’s suddenly very wary of making any sound at all. Wonwoo tries to shrug the hands off, but Soonyoung’s nails are finding homes in the fabric of his sweater.
“Hear what?”
“Don’t bullshit me. You definitely heard it.” He clings a little harder, hunches a little closer. “There’s something here.”
“Like what, a spooky little ghost?” Wonwoo cackles.
“Maybe,” Soonyoung groans, “or maybe, like, I don’t know, a bear? We’re in the middle of a forest, dickhead.”
“There is not a bear in here, Soonyoung.”
“How would you know?” Every few seconds, he throws another glance over his shoulder just to make sure the offending bear isn’t moseying down the hall toward them, eager to join in on the conversation. “Did you personally check this place for bears?”
“Maybe I did.”
“Liar!” Soonyoung hisses. “I’ve seen fucking Animal Planet, Wonwoo. Neither of us can take a bear, and I will leave you behind.”
“You would not.”
“I definitely would. And I will, as soon as the bear shows up.”
“There’s no bear.”
“You can’t prove that!” There’s another noise, fainter but still definitely there. Wonwoo’s chin jerks toward it, and Soonyoung knows he had to have heard that one. “We need to leave immediately.”
“No way. We just got here.”
“Yes way. How am I supposed to explain getting mauled by a bear in an abandoned school to my parents?”
“You won’t have to explain it—”
“Because I’ll be dead. You’re exactly right.”
“Because it’s not going to happen, you weenie.” He smacks Soonyoung in the chest a little bit too hard. “There’s no bear. Just help me hunt for ghosts.”
“Absolutely n—”
Another noise cuts him off, and he watches Wonwoo still. The increasing frequency of unidentifiable noises is markedly less than settling. Soonyoung chokes down the scream that almost escaped and plants both hands firmly on Wonwoo’s bony shoulders.
“We need to leave immediately.”
“But the ghosts—”
“We both know there aren’t any ghosts!” He tugs roughly back in the direction they came from. “Just come on.”
With a disappointed sigh, Wonwoo clicks his nonsense gadget off and slips it back in the outermost pocket of his bag. “Fine,” he says, “but you owe me dinner.” Considering Wonwoo paid absolutely nothing to bust them into this dusty hellhole, the very notion is righteously unjust, but Soonyoung is presently much more concerned with leaving than with justice.
“Sure, wherever you want to go. Let’s just leave already.” And with another sigh, beset by a deeply contented and even more deeply shit-eating grin, they are on their way back out.
They don’t make it very far before they hear another noise. Soonyoung still can’t tell what it is, but what he can tell is that it’s much closer and the very sound of it fills his entire stomach with lead; in lieu of screaming, he picks up the pace, pushes Wonwoo to walk even faster toward where he hopes the entrance is waiting for them. Maybe a little too fast.
“Ah.”
There is a small clatter, and then he can’t see anything. Wonwoo’s shoulders disappear from beneath his palms, and suddenly he feels like he’s in one of those sensory deprivation tanks, when everything his all one temperature and you can’t tell where your body ends and the space around you begins. The only thing saving him from that conviction is that it’s gotten brutally chilly in the past twenty minutes and his chest hurts from how hard his heart is beating inside it. He gropes around in the dark, but his hands can’t land on anything.
“Bad news,” Wonwoo’s voice says. Soonyoung exhales a shaky breath. At least he didn’t vanish.
“What?”
“I seem to have misplaced my flashlight.”
“You—what? How?”
“Ever heard of dropping it?”
“Jesus Christ, Wonwoo. You’re really literally killing me.” His hands glide around for another few seconds without making any contact. “You gotta find it, like, now.”
“Well, maybe if a certain someone whose name rhymes with Moon Rung hadn’t been pushing me at fucking warp speed to get out of here, I wouldn’t have lost my grip, huh?” Below, there’s a quiet rustling Soonyoung thinks has to be connected to Wonwoo, so he hunches to be beside it. “Help me look for it.” Scrunching his nose, Soonyoung sets his hands to roaming about the aged tiles.
Think of it like a date, Jihoon had told him. But just because nobody else lets themselves get easily roped into Wonwoo’s bullshit doesn’t make it a date. Soonyoung frowns as he feels around in the dark for a flashlight that might be broken anyway. Who in their right mind would want to call this a date? Rubbing your hands all over a dusty floor in the dark together because you’re afraid you will either be mauled by a bear or crushed in a landslide (or both, Soonyoung realizes with a shiver) is hardly ideal. In fact, if anything, this is the kind of excursion you take someone on before hitting them with the news that you never want to see them again. Just as well, maybe, since none of Soonyoung’s other friends have ever made him feel so much like he’s already seen his final sunrise. He jumps when his hand wraps around something.
“Oh, Wonwoo, I think—”
“That’s my leg.”
“What?” He wiggles his fingertips around, but there’s no give. “No way. This feels nothing like a human leg.”
After a second, his hand is enveloped by a small flat of muted warmth that feels a lot like another hand, wrapping over his knuckles and keeping his hand in its spot. Unless he’s lost all sense of his own physical being, which might be the case, he’s sure this hand belongs to either Wonwoo or the bear, and he hopes to god almighty the bear who’s come to eat them doesn’t have human hands.
“It’s my leg,” Wonwoo tells him again. Soonyoung is glad for the darkness only because it masks the fierce and unrelenting blush that blooms on his cheeks.
“My bad.”
Wonwoo takes his hand off Soonyoung’s, but instead of wriggling his skinny ankle out of Soonyoung’s grasp and going forth on the mission to find his flashlight, he doesn’t move. Soonyoung spends an ignorant three seconds waiting for the ankle to disappear before realizing he ought to just let it go himself. When at last he has, a hand touches down on his face, palm full on cheek. He doesn’t know whether he would prefer it to be Wonwoo’s or the mutant bear’s.
“Wonwoo?”
“Yes?”
“I know the hell you don’t think I’m your flashlight.”
“Correct.”
“So?”
“So does it feel like a date yet?”
Soonyoung would spit his teeth out if they were any looser.
“Excuse me?” Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, but Soonyoung can distinctly hear three words: you and heard and me, in that order. “Are you implying—”
“Not implying.” His thumb is tapping on Soonyoung’s cheek, which is still embarrassingly hot. Soonyoung draws breaths to try and cool himself down, but it doesn’t work. Of course it wouldn’t. Faintly, impossibly, he can see the outline of Wonwoo’s face in the darkness.
“So you and Jihoon conspired this together.”
“I wouldn’t say conspired.” Oh, sure. Soonyoung’s brain rings with Jihoon’s unusually optimistic parting words, eyelids flash with the sight of that reassuring smile, and he is one gust of wind away from punching himself in the gut as punishment for being the dumbest man alive. “So does it?”
“Does what what?”
“Keep up, Soonyoung.” Wonwoo pats his cheek. “Does it feel like a date?”
“Absolutely not.”
“What if I kiss you?” Round two of imminent tooth loss.
“We need,” Soonyoung begins, slow and careful, desperate not to stumble, “to find your flashlight.”
“That doesn’t sound like a no.”
“Your flashlight, Wonwoo.”
“Who needs it? The dark is sexier.” Soonyoung would love to retort, but nothing comes to him. He picks through his brain with a fine-toothed comb, but there’s nothing. Useless. “Come on, Soonyoung. Live a little.” Very ironic for the man who spends five hours every day shut up in his room reading to dare even say something like that. Soonyoung scoffs.
“I am living. Whatever. Just do it, if you’re gonna do it.”
“No need to sound so bitter.”
“I hate you.”
There he is then, full on Soonyoung’s lips, mildly warm despite the sinking chill in the air around them. As a date, Soonyoung hates this. He thinks it’s an absolute con, and when he’s back in broad daylight, he’s definitely going to get started on plotting his revenge. Unfortunately, for right now, he finds that he can’t even bring himself to be that angry despite how much he knows he wants to be. Wonwoo is smiling against his lips, which doesn’t help, and all things considered, he went on a date with a guy once who tried to get him to roleplay as a cowboy the whole night. So it does suck. But it’s not the worst, at least.
Just before Wonwoo ducks his head back, there is a gentle click, and Soonyoung is nearly blinded by the beam of white light that comes pouring out of Wonwoo’s clenched fist. It takes him a few starry-eyed moments to connect the dots before he swats Wonwoo’s hand off his cheek.
“Are you kidding me?”
“What?”
“You had it the whole time?”
“The flashlight? Yes.” He pats his own chest proudly with the hand now freed. “Got you, huh? I’ve been told I’d make a good actor.”
“You’re a piece of shit.”
“Okay, okay, tell you what.” He aims a finger gun right at the center of Soonyoung’s chest. “You don’t have to take me to dinner anymore. I’ll take you to dinner.”
His smile is so big and genuine, and Soonyoung is sure he will take him to dinner to make up for it. At the very least, Soonyoung will make sure he makes up for it somehow. With that thick layer of smugness sitting on his face right now, Wonwoo is not freeing himself from this unscathed. Soonyoung will demand the most expensive restaurant in town and the most expensive entrée, and if Wonwoo doesn’t pony up, he gets iced. At least, Soonyoung would like to think he has that much resolve, but he’ll probably settle for the home movie and takeout Wonwoo’s intensely more likely to provide him with. It’s a better picture than this one: blankets wrapped around them on the couch, something shitty like Jaws humming on the cheap TV set. Maybe another kiss. Maybe more than one. Another noise snaps him out of his daze.
“Say,” he coughs, “I don’t suppose you arranged those weird noises, too, huh?” Wonwoo’s grin wanes.
“Nope. Which reminds me, we should probably leave.” He pats Soonyoung’s thigh before standing up and setting off on a brisk pace back down the hall that leaves Soonyoung scrambling to follow. “We can talk dinner on the drive back,” he calls over his shoulder.
“Asshole,” Soonyoung shouts after him. “You’re an asshole. We’re gonna get eaten by a bear because of you.” Even when Wonwoo starts chuckling, he keeps up the stream. “I hate you I hate you I hate you.”
By the time they’re back among the trees, they’re both sprinting, crunching twigs under the soles of their shoes as they race back in the direction Wonwoo’s car is parked. Wonwoo’s laugh echoes around through the woods after every stray breeze that scares Soonyoung nearly out of his skin, and they keep running, heels aflame until they’ve buckled themselves into Wonwoo’s Kia. No bear attacks them, and no landslide buries them, but Soonyoung doesn’t feel completely safe until they’re a good mile and a half down the road.
“Have fun?” Wonwoo asks him at a red light, eyes trained forward to catch the eerie crimson glow of the hanging bulb.
“Absolutely not.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll head back sometime to find some real ghosts.” Soonyoung groans, and Wonwoo laughs again, just like he always seems to.
“God,” Soonyoung groans, and the smile on Wonwoo’s face grows. “I hate you.”
“Too bad. You’re still gonna have to have dinner with me.”
The rest of the drive home, Soonyoung broods quietly, eyes out the window and definitely not on the outline of Wonwoo’s reflection in the window. One of the speakers in Wonwoo’s car went out a few weeks ago, but Soonyoung finds he doesn’t mind the fuzzy sound of driving silence much so late at night, drifting near to sleep where his forehead presses against the glass. It’s going to be tough for him to tell this story later in a way that doesn’t make him seem like the weenie Wonwoo keeps accusing him of being, and he’s only got from now until they reach the apartment complex to think of something, so he has to stay awake, and more importantly, he has to avoid getting distracted by the recreation of Wonwoo’s smile on the glass right in front of him. He’s bad at it.
“Hey, Soonyoung,” Wonwoo says when they coast to a stop in the parking lot.
“Yeah?” Soonyoung turns lazily to face him, and Wonwoo has leaned all the way across the console, presses lips to his forehead. It’s disgustingly charming. He leans back with a smile.
“Thanks for coming with me. I’ll call you about dinner.”
His cheeks are still burning when he stalks up the stairs much too heavily for the hour, still red when he creaks the door open to find Seokmin and Jihoon in the midst of binging Seokmin’s latest big show craze. Mild interest turns ravenous when they spot the color on his face, and he’s forced into a brutal interrogation the minute they pause said show. Soonyoung sighs. If not one asshole, there’s two others ready to go. Wonwoo echoes back and forth between his ears until they finally release him to go to sleep, and a smile crosses his tired lips. There are bright sides, he reminds himself.
At least he didn’t scream.