They kept to the outside edge of the fence, walking the perimeter without ever stepping past it.
“Keep a note of everything you see,” Jihoon said, glancing sideways at him.
“Even the small stuff.
We need a full picture before anyone goes in.”
“So we’re not going in?”
“Not alone.
Not a good idea.”
“I’m not alone.
You’re right here.”
“Exactly.
There’s only two of us out here.” Jihoon kept his eyes on the building.
“If something happens right now, the rest of the team isn’t close enough to help.
That could go very badly, very fast.”
“Okay,” Ishaan said, and meant it.
He kept walking, notebook out, jotting down small things as they passed.
A flicker near the second floor that might have been the same girl from before.
Then, further along, something else entirely.
A shape drifted along the far wall, thin and wrong, arms too long for the rest of it.
It shimmered at the edges like heat coming off summer pavement, like looking at it too directly made the air itself blur.
It didn’t seem to notice him at first, drifting along the wall in slow, uneven movements, pausing and starting again with no rhythm to any of it.
Ishaan wrote woman in his notebook without fully deciding to, eyes still locked on the shimmering shape.
He stopped walking.
He wasn’t sure when exactly he’d stopped.
“Jihoon.” A voice, distant, like it was coming from somewhere underwater.
Ishaan’s mouth opened.
Something was pulling the words up out of him before he’d decided to say anything at all.
A hand clamped over his mouth from behind.
Another hand turned his face away from the wall, firm but not rough.
“Hey.
Hey.
Look at me.” Jihoon’s voice, closer now, slow and steady.
“Hey, hey, hey.”
The world snapped back into focus all at once, sound rushing in like a wave breaking.
Ishaan blinked hard, Jihoon’s hand still covering his mouth, both of them frozen there for a second before Jihoon finally let go.
“What happened?” Ishaan asked, voice smaller than he meant it to be.
“You tell me.
What did you see?”
“Something weird.
Kind of like a woman, but not really.
It didn’t look right.” Ishaan rubbed his eyes.
“Why?”
“What were you trying to say to it?”
“I wasn’t trying to say anything.” Ishaan frowned.
“Why would I say something to it?”
Jihoon studied him for a long moment, something unreadable behind his expression.
He didn’t push further, though Ishaan got the sense he wanted to.
Before he could answer, his phone rang.
He checked the screen, then answered it.
“We’re back with everything,” Junho’s voice came through.
“Need you two over here.”
Jihoon hung up and grabbed Ishaan’s hand without asking, pulling him along the fence line toward the parking lot.
Baek noticed something was off the second they got close, eyes narrowing at both of them.
“What happened over there?” he asked.
“Not sure what he saw,” Jihoon said.
“But he was trying to talk to it.
If I hadn’t stopped him, I think we’d be dealing with a lot worse right now.”
“So it’s powerful,” Junho said, already unpacking bags of salt from the trunk.
“Yeah,” Jihoon said.
“It’s powerful.”
Everyone got moving after that.
Junho handed out salt to whoever wanted it, then started drawing a circle in the gravel near the fence, a second one inside the first, writing something between the two lines in careful, practiced strokes.
“Inside the circles, not outside them.”
Yuna pulled her headphones down and sat beside Ishaan, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” she said.
“I went into a bigger case once, years ago.
Accidentally called out its name, told it mine right back before I even realized what I’d done.” She shrugged, light about it in a way that felt deliberate.
“That’s why they don’t send me into the big ones alone anymore.
First one to get possessed, guaranteed.
Now I’ve got you to keep me company instead.”
“What happened to you?
After the name thing?”
“Bad week,” Yuna said, and left it at that, the smile not quite reaching the rest of her face this time.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Ishaan asked.
“A little,” she said, grinning.
Junho kept working, one circle, then another, murmuring something under his breath the whole time.
“What’s he doing?” Ishaan asked.
“Building a barrier,” Yuna said.
“Keeps whatever’s inside from getting out.
Keeps anything outside from wandering in and interfering.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Ishaan said.
“It’s really not, but sure,” Yuna said.
“Things can come in and interfere?”
“Oh.
Yeah, forgot to mention that part.” She said it so casually it almost didn’t register as alarming.
“Good to know,” Ishaan said flatly.
“How long’s this going to take?” he asked after a moment.
“Property’s huge.
Two, maybe three days, easily.” Yuna glanced toward the building.
“Which is good, actually.
Means we’re not going inside today, or tomorrow, or possibly the day after that either.”
Ishaan looked toward the mall too, and that was when he noticed her face change, some small shift settling over her features.
“You’re seeing her too, aren’t you,” Ishaan said quietly.
Yuna didn’t answer right away.
Her eyes had gone distant, the same way they had earlier.
Ishaan looked up.
The sky had shifted toward evening, the little girl standing near an upper window, watching them both.
“She says she saw you,” Yuna said, her voice shifting slightly, taking on something younger, lighter than her own.
“Never thought you’d come back here.”
“What?” Ishaan’s stomach turned.
“She’s happy to see you.
Wants to see how you perform.” Yuna’s eyes stayed fixed on nothing.
“There’s other things talking too, but that one, she says she’s been waiting for you specifically.”
“How would she even know I’d come here?
We only just took the case.”
“She’s not answering that,” Yuna said, listening to something.
“She’s just laughing about it.
Like she already knew before you did.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Ishaan said.
“I know.” Yuna’s jaw tightened.
“I’m hearing the bell along with her voice.
That means she’s strong.
Really strong.”
“Didn’t need that information, but thank you.”
“Sorry.” Yuna’s breathing had gone shallow.
“She wants to know why the goddess picked you.
Says let’s play a game, cat and mouse, or hide and seek, whichever you’d rather call it.” A pause.
“Would you tell me your—”
Yuna’s hand flew up to cover her own mouth, eyes wide and suddenly fully present again.
“I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have channeled that all the way through.” She shook her head hard, like she was trying to physically dislodge something.
“That was too close.”
By the time the sky had gone fully dark, everyone regrouped near the cars, and they drove to a motel a few minutes out, the kind with a flickering sign and thin walls. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
“So what happened back there?” Somi asked, dropping her bag by the door.
“I was hearing her,” Yuna said.
“She wanted his name.
She almost got me to ask him for it out loud.”
The room went quiet.
“How close is almost?” Somi asked carefully.
“One more word,” Yuna said.
“Maybe half a word.”
“That’s too close for comfort,” Jihoon said, arms crossed, voice flat.
“This is bigger than we thought,” Baek said finally, and for once he didn’t sound like he was trying to be reassuring about it.
He sat down heavily on the edge of the nearest bed, running both hands through his hair.
“In fifteen years I’ve never had one get that close to a name without actually taking it,” he said.
“Not once.
Whatever’s in there isn’t just powerful.
It’s patient.
It’s been sitting in that building for thirty years figuring out exactly how to do this right.”
“You two aren’t coming tomorrow,” Jihoon said, looking between Ishaan and Yuna.
“We’re doing the full perimeter work.
Too dangerous to have either of you that close while we’re setting the deeper wards.”
“I can handle it,” Ishaan started to argue.
“That’s not the point,” Baek said.
“It almost had your name today.
One more word out of her mouth and it would’ve had it.
We’re not giving it another shot at that.”
The next day, Ishaan and Yuna stayed behind at the motel while the rest of the team headed back out at dawn.
Yuna spent most of the morning showing him her tablet, walking him through case files from years back, pointing out patterns in old reports.
“See this,” she said, tapping the screen.
“This is how you tell early signs of possession risk versus just general unease.
Totally different documentation.”
“How do you even categorize something like yesterday, then?” Ishaan asked, leaning over to look.
“Honestly?
I’m still figuring that out myself.
That was new territory even for me.”
“Don’t cause any trouble, you two,” Somi called from the doorway before heading out, only half joking.
The room settled into quiet after everyone left, just the hum of the air conditioner and the sound of Yuna scrolling through old files.
Ishaan’s eyes drifted toward the window for no particular reason, just a habit he’d picked up without meaning to.
Nothing there.
Just the parking lot, empty except for a stray cat weaving between the cars.
He looked back down at the tablet.
Yuna kept talking, something about incident classifications, her voice steady and unhurried.
A few minutes passed.
The air conditioner clicked off, then on again.
Something felt different in the room, though Ishaan couldn’t have said what.
A pressure behind his eyes, maybe.
A stillness that hadn’t been there a minute ago.
Yuna’s voice trailed off mid-sentence.
Ishaan looked up slowly, the tablet still warm in his hands.
The little girl was sitting on the edge of the motel bed, hands folded neatly in her lap, watching them both with her head tilted at that same wrong angle.
She hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.
There had been no door opening, no sound at all.
Yuna went completely still beside him, headphones halfway off, eyes wide, not breathing.
“You can hear her too,” Ishaan said, barely above a whisper.
Yuna nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off the girl.
Neither of them moved.
Neither of them said anything for what felt like a long time, the air conditioner humming on, the stray cat still weaving between cars outside like nothing in the world had changed.
The girl on the bed didn’t open her mouth at all.
She just watched, smiling, slow and satisfied, like she’d been waiting all day for exactly this moment.
Yuna’s lips parted instead, her own voice sliding into something younger, lighter, not hers at all.
“Found you,” Yuna said, in the girl’s voice, eyes still locked on nothing.
Ishaan looked between the two of them, the girl silent and smiling on the bed, the words coming out of someone else’s mouth entirely.