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Jisung always feels sad when the leaves of the trees in his backyard start falling. The change of seasons and the passage of time is inevitable, he knows, but the yellowing of trees and the temperatures getting colder only serve as reminders of how lonely he is. Of how another birthday of his has already passed, and he had no one to celebrate it with.
Though, he figures, his birthday isn’t a date to be celebrated these days.
Jisung is sad. He looks out the window of his bedroom, at the yard and the lake he spent the best part of his youth on, and he’s sad.
He misses his parents.
He misses his mother’s smile, her home-cooked meals and all the love she poured into her cooking. He misses the way she would stop by his room every night to check on him even as he grew older, to kiss him goodnight, how she would always greet him the next day with warm food on the breakfast table.
He misses his dad and his guitar, how he would fill the house with his voice at sunrise and sunset. He misses going on bike rides with him, delivering fruits from their orchard to their neighbors. He misses his dad’s smile, too, and how he would look at him like he was the most precious thing in the world.
If Jisung could turn back time, he would like to get his family back. He would make them never move away. He would do anything to fix what was broken. But he can’t turn back time, and he can’t get them back.
He’s sad. He looks at the landline phone still attached to the kitchen wall and knows there is no one he could call, even if he wanted to. And he has wanted to for so, so long.
It’s been four years since they left. Since he’s been alone in this house that is too big for him. He knows because he’s been keeping a tally on the dust that has collected on top of his dresser, otherwise untouched for four years and six months. He wonders why his mother didn’t take his clothes with her. Thinks they would’ve been better off at a charity shop rather than left here for the moths.
If he could turn back time, he would try to find a way to tell his mother to take the clothes. To do something good with them once he was no longer able to keep them. He would’ve found a way to gather enough energy to tell her that, if nothing else. Maybe let her know one last time that he loved her.
The silence is deafening. From sunrise to sunset, silence is now the only thing that follows Jisung around the house. It’s just him, his thoughts, and the ghost of everything that once was.
Funny thing, he thinks, how life goes on once you pass. How time moves on, yet you’re frozen in it. Trapped alone in a place you once loved, missing the people who meant the world to you.
His mother didn’t believe in the afterlife. Six months after the accident, when she told his dad they had to leave this house, that she couldn’t stand being here any longer, Jisung tried to tell her to stay. Tried grabbing onto her wrists to hold her back. But she didn’t hear him, she didn’t feel it.
So, they left, and now he’s here alone.
He's alone as September crawls into October. He wishes that, when he goes to the backyard, he could rake up the rotting leaves. That he could breathe some life into the place even as nature seems set on stripping all traces of it. He knows he should feel cold, but it’s been long since he last felt anything other than his sadness.
Jisung hears car tires crushing the branches on his driveway in the late hours of the morning. The clock on the kitchen wall reads 8:15, but he knows that isn’t right. The batteries had run out shortly after he marked the first tally on his dresser.
He runs to the living room, the floorboards no longer creaking under his feet. When he looks out of the window, he expects to see his parents’ car — hopes that, maybe, they have decided to come back after so long. Instead, he’s met with a model and a license plate that he doesn’t recognize.
If he could still hold his breath, he would. It’s been so long since he last saw anyone that he doesn’t even know what to do.
He watches as a young man gets out of the car, holding a camera with his left hand and closing the door with the other. The man points the camera at the house, and through the closed window, Jisung can’t hear what his muffled voice is saying. He wonders how he found his way here and why he's recording a video of his home.
The man walks around the house, not once lowering his camera, talking to it like he’s talking to a friend — or so Jisung thinks. Jisung follows him along his path, catching glimpses of him through the windows, letting curiosity carry him all the way back to the kitchen. He sees the man stop as he catches sight of the lake, his voice trailing off until he’s no longer talking.
If his heart was still beating, Jisung is sure he would feel it clench painfully in his chest. Now he’s just sad.
The man turns the camera back to the house, aiming its lens at the second story. To Jisung’s bedroom window. When he starts walking again, approaching the back porch, Jisung takes a step back. Feels panic rise in his chest as the man reaches for the doorknob of the back door, can’t think fast enough to lock it before it’s being pushed open.
Jisung crashes into the kitchen table, but the silverware on it doesn’t clatter. The wood doesn’t dig into his hip. He meets the most beautiful man he has ever seen, and he’s not even alive to greet him. His feet sink into the floorboards.
“That’s a bit surprising,” the man says into the microphone attached to his jacket. “I wasn’t expecting the door to be open. Totally thought I’d have to climb through a window like I did two videos ago.”
The man takes a moment to look around the kitchen, awe in his eyes and his slightly parted lips as he takes in the space Jisung still calls his home. He aims his camera at the pots still on the stove, at the plates on the drying rack that have dried long ago. Aims it at the wooden table, and Jisung manages to pull his feet from the floorboards just in time to move out of frame.
“You guys,” the man speaks, sounding a little breathless. “I don’t know how long this place has been abandoned, but can you see how cool this is? It’s almost like they never left.” He pauses, and then backtracks on his words. “Well, it’s not cool. The reason why they left is pretty sad, actually.”
The man hits the recording button and the camera goes off. He puts it on the table, next to the plates Jisung hasn’t moved in years, and takes his phone out of the inner pocket of his jacket.
The quietness of his home seems a thousand times louder now that Jisung isn’t alone. He can hear every breath the man takes, every light tapping of his finger on the screen of his phone. When he brings the device up to his ear, Jisung can almost hear his hair strands brushing to make way for his hand.
The call rings loudly. It’s been so long since Jisung last saw signs of human life. The man’s face pinches in concentration.
“Hey,” he greets the person on the other end of the line. “It’s Minho. Is Chan free to talk right now?”
The man — Minho — pauses, waiting for the person who answered the call to check if whoever Chan might be is free right now. Jisung wants to blend in with the walls, wishes he wasn’t trapped in this house for the rest of eternity.
He wishes he could ask Minho why he’s here.
“Yeah, I made it. The back door was open.” Another pause. “I’ll call back later, then. Let him know I called.”
Minho hangs up the call and grabs his camera again, picking up his video right where he left off. It doesn’t take long for Jisung to figure out that he must have an online audience to whom he’s going to post this for, and his confusion only grows bigger. Why is he here of all places? How did he hear about it? Is he just doing a sweep of the house to see how time stands still once all traces of life leave, or is it something else?
The floorboards creak under Minho’s weight as he guides his audience out of the kitchen and into the living room. Jisung quietly trails after him even though he knows the house no longer responds to him the way it does to Minho, watching as Minho points his camera to the outlines of picture frames imprinted on the wall next to the staircase.
Minho brings his free hand up to trace the outlines. Wonders out loud to his invisible audience if that’s where the family pictures used to be. Jisung wants to tell him that yes, that’s exactly it, but he can’t bring himself to open his mouth. It’s not like Minho would hear him.
“I have to get my equipment from the car still, but should we go take a look upstairs first?” he says into the microphone, starting his way up the stairs knowing he won’t be getting an answer.
The stairs cry under Minho’s feet, not having had the weight of another body on them since Jisung’s parents left. He aims the camera at the steps, points out to the people watching his video in the future all the noises the house makes. And then he wonders if he’s here alone.
Jisung stalls behind Minho just as he reaches the upper floor, turning directly to his right and into what once was his parents’ room. Is this why he’s here? To try and catch a glimpse of a ghost on camera? To sensationalize his death to an audience that doesn’t even know him?
Jisung feels anger boil in his non-corporeal body. He storms into his parents’ room, set on doing something to scare this stranger off, to get him out of his house and off his property, but he stops in his tracks when he sees Minho going through what once was his mother’s bedside table.
If he still had a beating heart, it would’ve sunk.
It had been long since he had last been in this room, and even longer since he last went through the stuff that was left behind. He doesn’t like the reminder that his parents left without him, and seeing Minho find pictures of them — buried deep in his mother’s drawer — hurts. It makes his sadness grow tenfold.
“These must have been the parents,” Minho says quietly into his microphone. “I can’t imagine the pain they went through to just leave everything behind like this.”
Back out into the hallway, briefly into the bathroom, and then he’s in Jisung’s room. The place where he spent most of his days, both in life and in death. Frozen in time from the day he died. Jisung knows all of his things are still here — all his clothes, his guitar, the pictures buried deep in his dresser, in boxes in his closet. Memorabilia his parents refused to take with them, like the reminder that they once had a child was too much for them to bear.
Minho doesn’t go through his things. He stops in the middle of the room, and he’s so quiet that Jisung fears he will see him. Minho creeps closer to the window, every creak of the floorboards louder on the second story. Aiming his camera at the wretched lake.
“I’ll go grab my equipment. See you guys in a bit.”
Minho sighs the second his camera is off. He looks around the room as if expecting to see something—someone. But he looks right through Jisung, doesn’t see that he’s there just like his parents hadn’t. Just like no one ever did.
The next hour — Jisung thinks but can’t be sure of, as time hasn’t felt real since he died — passes with Minho pretty much setting up camp in his living room. He puts his camera on a tripod, sets up battery-powered lights, and sits on the dusty couch. There are bags of equipment by his feet that he doesn’t open just yet, and Jisung would be lying if he said he isn’t curious to see what’s inside.
He sits next to Minho’s tripod on the floor.
“We’re running out of daylight,” Minho says to the camera with a shy smile, “which means I can begin my investigation soon.” He chuckles lightly, as if not believing how silly he sounds. “So, guys, the place I’m at today has been abandoned for about four years, or at least that’s what Chan tells me. If it turns out not to be true, feel free to leave him hate comments down below.”
Jisung chuckles as Minho does. He thinks Minho looks gorgeous when he smiles.
“There isn’t much that is known about what happened. My team and I tried looking into it to get as much detail as we could, but…” Sadness flashes in Minho’s eyes. “I think it’s safe to assume that the couple who lived here left because of grief.”
Minho takes out a folded piece of paper from his jacket’s pocket. Against the harsh light set up, Jisung can see a picture of himself. His jaw sets in place.
“I’ll put a picture up on the screen, but this is all that’s known. Han Jisung, born on September 14, 2000, died on July 07, 2020. He is survived by both his parents and was a very loving son. That’s all his obituary says. We haven’t contacted his parents to ask what happened, I think that would be a pretty cruel thing to do.”
Jisung feels like he could cry. He hasn’t cried in four years.
“If I don’t get anything tonight, I might ask the neighbors tomorrow once I leave if they know what happened. Here’s to hoping the night goes well.”
Minho reaches for the camera and turns it off. Jisung expects him to start moving — to set up all the equipment he brought with him, to turn off the lights and get serious about his ghost hunting business, but he just… sits there for a while. Holding onto the cutout of his obituary, his fingers gently caressing the edges of the paper. He looks so sad; Jisung wonders why he feels this sad over someone he’s never met.
Jisung wishes he could talk to him.
Instead, he moves out of the way as Minho reaches for the bags by his feet, taking out a small array of devices that Jisung had seen on TV too many times but that looks rather silly in real life. He wonders if any of them actually work; if, when the lights on the speaker-looking thing go off, it’s because it’s actually detecting someone’s presence. He wonders if Minho will be able to hear him in a recording when he speaks.
Minho sets the devices across the house like he’s trying to cover all his bases. When he kills the nights, Jisung can hear his breath shake. The beep of a camera, another red light blinking in the empty space.
“Okay guys,” Minho greets his audience once again. “As I was setting up my equipment earlier — you know, the big lights and all that — I made sure to check if the house still had electricity running. None of the switches seem to work, and the plugs don’t work either.” He flips the switch by the stairs on and off to make a point of what he’s saying. “I’ll run my EMF reader along them just so you know I’m not bullshitting you.”
And he does just that. Holds out a voice recorder-looking thing to the wall, swings it this way and that. Jisung keeps his distance, always several steps behind when he moves to a different light switch, the device remaining quiet and unlit.
“Now that that’s out of the way,” Minho mutters, putting the EMF reader in the pocket of his jacket. “Jisung, I’m not sure if you’re still here, but in case you are, hello.” Minho isn’t pointing the camera in his direction, but he isn’t sure if Minho knows where he’s pointing it in general. Doesn’t know if it has night vision. “My name is Minho and I run a YouTube channel. I put a device on the—on your kitchen table that will light up when you get close to it. So, if you could let me know…”
Jisung doesn’t move an inch closer to the device. He stays where he is between the kitchen and the living room as Minho moves closer to the thing. He watches as Minho reaches his free hand out of the device as if to demonstrate, and the lights on it immediately start going crazy.
“Like that,” Minho says. “It’s okay if you don’t. I wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger, either.”
Jisung thinks about the irony of that statement. Of how he’s currently talking to several faceless people who will be watching this very video in the future.
“I have a voice recorder running on my watch, so if you want to tell me something, hopefully we’ll be able to catch it. Okay?” Jisung thinks this guy is very cute. It’s adorable how dedicated he is to his craft. He nods, even though Minho can’t see; even though he has no plans to get close to the pod on the table. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
Of course, Jisung will always remember the summer it happened. It’s the last thing he did in life.
It was a nice summer day. The sky was spotless of clouds and the water in the lake was the perfect temperature — not too warm, not too cold. The birds were chirping, his parents were happy, and all Jisung wanted was to spend a nice day outside with them. His dad had the grill out, his mom was elbows-deep in berries, and instead of helping his dad with the meat, he stupidly thought he could instead spend some time in the lake.
He could still see his parents from the dock, but he knew that the moment he got in the water, his voice wouldn’t carry as easily. He knew that, if he were to call for his dad, the chances of his dad hearing him over the sizzling of meat on the grill were extremely low. Still, he went in.
Jisung wasn’t the best swimmer. His parents tried teaching him when he was little, spent money to put him in classes, but swimming was never his forte. He was never in any real danger, though — he knew how to float and how to get himself back to shore or the dock, and that had always been fine.
Until that summer.
He wasn’t far enough from the dock that he wouldn’t be able to get back to safety, but he didn’t expect to get caught in an inflow current. The river that ran across their lake had never been a danger to his safety, but now he thinks that his first mistake was to let his guard down.
When he realized he was being pulled away from the shore, he panicked, and as his head was pulled underwater, he knew it was over. The last thing he remembers thinking before he lost consciousness was that his dad would notice that he was gone. That he would pull him out of the lake in time.
But that never happened.
He was already watching life play out from a point of view that was removed from his body when his dad lifted his gaze from the grill and realized he wasn’t at his usual spot by the dock. He had to witness as horror painted across his features, as panic settled into his voice when he called his name and alerted his mom that something was wrong.
It wasn’t his dad who pulled him out of the water. His mother was the one who called the police in hysterics, the one who told them their child was dead. Drowned in the lake on a perfect summer day.
Divers came in to retrieve his body as the cops took his parents’ statements. He was devastated to see his mother cry the way she did, inconsolable for hours and days and weeks; he just wanted to hold her hand, to tell her that he wasn’t hurting, but she never felt any of it. He knows all she could feel was pain.
That was the first time he saw his dad cry, too. The first time he saw him blame himself for something he had no control over. This was no one’s fault but Jisung’s. He wishes he didn’t have to spend the rest of eternity with the guilt of making his parents go through all that.
He doesn’t tell Minho any of that. He brings his hands up to his cheeks and wipes away the ghosts of tears off of what was once his skin.
“Were you happy here?”
Yes, Jisung whispers through non-tears, but he knows it isn’t loud enough for Minho’s recorder to catch. There was never a moment he spent in this house that he thought he was unhappy, and he wishes — he hopes his parents know that. That until the very end he was happy here with them.
“Are you at peace? Is there anything I can do for you, Jisung?”
Jisung aches. He has made peace with his passing long ago, but to say that he’s at peace… he isn’t sure he can do that. All he had wanted for the past four years was for none of this to have ever happened. That he was just living a very bad, very long nightmare.
And unless Minho can raise people from the dead or give him a new body, he isn’t sure there is anything that can be done at this point.
He wishes he would talk to his parents, though. To let them know that he’s well despite everything that happened. Sure, he might be sad to be alone, but he’s well. He has been well for their sake.
Minho reaches for the REM pod and turns it off. He moves upstairs then, back into Jisung’s room, where he sets the device on the dresser, right next to the tally Jisung had been marking every fall.
“I’m going to spend the night here if that’s okay with you,” Minho says. “You’re free to touch me, or talk to me, or touch this device to let me know you’re here. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Why are you here?” Jisung softly asks as Minho records every corner of his room. The question doesn’t elicit a response from him, but it’s not like he had been expecting one.
Minho settles on his bed after dusting off the sheets, the frame creaking under the sudden weight after having gone so long in disuse. He turns the camera to himself then to address his audience; he tells them the room is cold but that that’s to be expected in a house without heating, that he isn’t getting much activity but that he can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t alone.
“Would you stay?” Jisung asks.
At the same time, Minho turns his head in his direction and says, “Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” Jisung answers. Hopes that Minho will be able to hear it in his recording even if he can’t hear him right now.
Minho looks at the camera again. “Alright guys, it’s getting pretty late and I’m tired from the drive. I think I’ll try to get some sleep. I’ll leave the camera running overnight, hopefully the battery won’t run out.” He sighs. “Thank you for communicating with me, Jisung. If there is anything you’d like to say throughout the night, my devices will all be running.”
Jisung wishes he could go to sleep, too. Minho sets his camera on the bedside table, its lens pointed at him when he lies down and makes himself as comfortable as possible, and Jisung just watches. Watches as he hugs his jacket closer to his body, as he closes his pretty eyes and his lashes touch the highs of his cheeks, as his breathing evens out and he’s eventually pulled into sleep.
He wonders if he could get inside Minho’s head. If he tried hard enough, he would make Minho see the things he wants to see. He never managed to get his mom to listen to him, but what if the man sleeping in his bed is different? He seems open to it, at least.
Jisung waits for the hours to pass. Waits until it’s late, until he’s sure that Minho won’t wake if his energy manifests hard enough. And then he sits next to him, in the sliver of space that Minho had left on his bed, and he tries.
He runs a hand up Minho’s arm, delicate enough, truly just the ghost of a touch. Grazes his cheek, and Jisung wishes he could feel the warmth of his skin under his fingers. And then he touches his temple, and does his best to make Minho see.
Jisung thinks about all the happy moments he spent in the house. Makes sure Minho will see his smile if this works and how happy he’d been. And then he thinks about his death and the unfortunate tragedy it had been, and tries to show him why his parents left. How they couldn’t deal with the grief of losing him.
Minho wakes with a gasp and sweat beading at his hairline, and Jisung doesn’t move from his spot next to him. Even in the dark, Jisung can see the way Minho quickly tries to blink himself awake, reaching for his phone that he had shoved under the pillow to check the time.
02:34 A.M.
He reaches for his camera. “It’s currently two in the morning,” Minho croaks out, voice rough with sleep, his speech slurred. He lowers the brightness of his screen and turns his phone to the camera before shoving it back under the pillow. “I just had the craziest dream with the boy who died here. It might be just a dream,” It isn’t, “but I’ll have to review all recordings and footage to see if I got any response. I also feel like there’s someone in bed with me.”
A pause. Minho lets out a shaky breath.
“Jisung, if this is you, let me know somehow. Let me help you.”
Stay, Jisung wants to beg. Please stay.
“Hey, it’s me.”
Minho is lying on the deck by the lake, bathing in the cold October sunlight, his phone set on speaker where he has placed it next to his head. Jisung thinks this is the first time in years he has been this close to the waters that killed him.
“I know, I still have your contact saved on my phone,” the person Minho is calling — Chan, as per the caller ID — says. “How did the investigation go?”
“I had an awful dream last night,” Minho says. “I think the boy drowned in the lake.”
“Fuck, that’s horrible,” Chan says. Jisung can appreciate the sentiment. “No wonder the house was left as it was, I’m not sure I’d have been able to handle it either if I was in his parents’ shoes. How are you feeling, though? Think you got anything?”
Minho’s eyes flutter open as he stares up at the sky.
“You know I have no way to prove this, but I know he’s here with me. I’m at the dock he spent his last moments on, and I know he’s here with me.”
“Oh,” Chan’s reply is soft, almost too careful. “Does it feel… tormented? His presence, I mean.”
Jisung puts a hand over Minho’s. Tries to hold it as best as he can.
“No,” Minho answers. “There’s a sadness to it, and I think that’s just inevitable, but… I think he was very happy in life. If I could hear him, I think that’s what he would be trying to tell me.”
It is, Jisung thinks. I was.
“Can you do me a favor, hyung? Can you check if the house is for sale?”
A pause on the other end of the line. If Jisung still had a beating heart, he would be feeling it trip in his ribcage, he’s sure of it.
“What?” Chan asks with a nervous chuckle. “Minho, you can’t be serious. You’re—so far from us right now. Are you thinking about buying a house someone died in?”
“I’ve made enough with my videos to do it,” Minho reasons. Jisung tries to hold tighter onto his hand. “I don’t know, hyung. I think he wants me to stay, and I don’t think I want him to be lonely for the rest of eternity.”
On the speaker of Minho’s phone, Chan sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll look into it. If I can’t find it on the market, I’ll try to track down his parents. But then you will have to be the one to tell them you want to buy the house where their son died, I’m not putting myself through that.”
“That’s fine. Thanks, hyung.” The call disconnects, and Minho takes a deep breath. “Was that okay?” he says to the wind. “Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes,” Jisung answers. Hopes Minho will hear him. “Please.”
Minho smiles softly, his cheeks rosy like delicate blooms.
“Then I’ll stay.”