Baek walked Hana and Doyoon out to the family car first thing in the morning, the driver already waiting with the trunk open.
“Be good for your mom,” Baek said, crouching down to Doyoon’s level.
“I’m always good,” Doyoon said, which wasn’t remotely true, but nobody argued with him about it.
“You’ll be back for dinner?” Hana asked, adjusting Doyoon’s jacket.
“Should be.
Depends how long the site check takes.” Baek kissed her cheek and watched the car pull away before turning back toward Jihoon’s SUV, where the rest of them were already loading in.
Chairman Yoo climbed in last, waving off anyone who looked surprised.
“I want to see this property myself.
Humor an old man.”
“You’re not that old,” Junho said.
“I’m old enough to remember when you were still afraid of the dark,” Chairman Yoo said, and Junho had nothing to say to that.
Nobody argued with the chairman coming along either.
The drive out took most of the morning, the city eventually giving way to the same isolated stretch of road Ishaan remembered from the first visit.
Fields rolled past the windows, the same dead quiet settling over the car the closer they got.
They pulled up to the mall a little past midday, the building looking almost ordinary in the daylight, none of the weight it had carried the last time they’d stood here.
None of them had gotten real answers the night before.
Mostly just more questions stacked on top of the ones they’d already had.
Nobody said that part out loud, though.
It sat quietly in the car the whole ride out instead, filling the silence in a way the radio couldn’t quite cover.
Jihoon led Ishaan across the cracked parking lot toward the entrance.
“Let’s do a proper sweep.
Full perimeter.”
They walked the building slowly, checking every corner, every shadow, every gap between the broken windows.
Nothing.
Ishaan kept expecting his stomach to drop the way it always did, that familiar prickle at the back of his neck warning him something was watching.
It never came.
The building just sat there, quiet and broken and entirely ordinary.
A few ordinary things, dust, old wiring, the usual bones of an abandoned building, but nothing that made Ishaan’s skin crawl the way it used to here.
“Nothing over here either,” Junho called from across the lot, kicking at a loose brick.
“No ringing,” Yuna added, headphones down around her neck.
“Nothing at all, actually.
It’s just quiet.
Normal quiet.”
“So it’s clear,” Somi said.
“A regular property now.”
“Looks that way,” Jihoon said, though something in his voice suggested he still wasn’t entirely used to trusting that.
He walked the length of the lobby one more time anyway, slower this time, like he wanted to be absolutely certain before he let himself believe it.
They finished the walk-through without incident, the mall sitting in the afternoon light like any other abandoned building anywhere in the country.
“You’ve got the company phone, right?” Jihoon asked, turning to Ishaan.
Ishaan dug through his bag and pulled it out.
“Yeah, right here.”
“Call the accounting team and the surveyor group.
Have accounting run an estimate and send it to Mr.
Cho.
Let him know we’re taking on the renovation.”
“On it.” Ishaan stepped a few paces away and made the calls, keeping his voice steady and professional the way he’d practiced a hundred times by now.
“Mr.
Kang’s approved the property,” he told the surveyor team.
“We’ll need someone out here as soon as possible.”
“We can have a full report ready by tomorrow morning,” the voice on the other end said.
“Just need a few signatures from your end first.”
“I’ll make sure that happens,” Ishaan said, and hung up feeling something close to competent for the first time in days.
He called accounting next, relaying the same information, listening to someone read back numbers he only half understood before confirming everything sounded right and hanging up.
“All set,” he said, walking back over to the group.
“Report by tomorrow morning.
Estimate’s already being drafted.”
“Look at you,” Somi said.
“Real corporate assistant energy.”
“I contain multitudes,” Ishaan said, and Junho snorted so hard he nearly choked on nothing at all.
By the time they piled back into the SUV, the exhaustion had caught up with all of them at once.
Nobody had eaten since breakfast.
“I’m going home,” Chairman Yoo announced as they pulled up to the apartment complex.
“Your mother’s cooking tonight, and I intend to be there for it.”
His driver was already waiting at the curb.
He waved once and disappeared into the car, gone within a minute.
The rest of them trudged into the building, dropping bags by the elevator, too tired to do much more than groan about the day.
“I could cook something,” Ishaan offered, mostly to fill the silence.
“If some of you help.”
“Wait, seriously?” Somi’s whole posture perked up.
“Yeah.
Nothing fancy.
But I’ve got stuff in my fridge.”
Everyone scattered to shower first, and by the time they trickled back down to Ishaan’s apartment, he’d already started on dinner, leftover meat sizzling in the pan alongside rice and whatever vegetables hadn’t gone bad yet.
Somi appeared first, hair still damp, and immediately started pulling plates down from the cabinet without being asked.
“Where do you keep your spoons?”
“Second drawer.”
Yuna showed up next, dropping onto a stool at the counter to watch him cook, occasionally offering unsolicited advice about seasoning that Ishaan mostly ignored.
Junho wandered in last, sniffing the air dramatically.
“That smells like an actual home-cooked meal.
I forgot what that smelled like.”
“Don’t you have a mother who cooks for you constantly?” Somi asked.
“That’s different.
That’s her cooking.
This is Ishaan cooking.
New flavor profile.”
“I’m heading to my family.
You all enjoy this.”
“Lucky guy,” Junho said, dropping onto Ishaan’s couch.
“Having someone cook for you every night.”
“You all have someone now too,” Baek said, nodding toward the kitchen, already halfway out the door.
“Don’t talk to us like that,” Somi called after him, though she was grinning.
Ishaan pretended not to hear any of it, focused on the pan.
The dish came together simple and fast, fried rice with a spicy chutney stirred through it, nothing complicated, just something warm and familiar he could make with his eyes closed.
Jihoon leaned against the counter nearby, arms crossed, watching him work without saying much of anything.
“You’re staring,” Ishaan said, not looking up from the pan.
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re doing nothing useful, is what you’re doing.”
“I’m providing moral support,” Jihoon said, and Ishaan caught something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he looked away again.
He plated it out and set it on the table, and everyone dug in almost immediately.
“Okay, this tastes completely different,” Somi said around a mouthful.
“In a genuinely good way.
What even is this?”
“Family recipe.
Sort of.
My mom’s version, mostly.”
“You need to make this every week,” Yuna said, already reaching for a second helping without waiting to be offered one.
Junho, without warning, threw both arms around Ishaan from behind, resting his chin on his shoulder.
“Marry me.
Be my lover.
I’ll never ask for anything else again, I swear it on my life.”
“Get off,” Ishaan said, shoving his face away with one hand, laughing despite himself.
“I have some self-respect, unlike you, apparently.”
The table erupted into laughter, even Jihoon, a real one this time, quiet but unmistakable.
“He said he has self-respect,” Yuna said, pointing her chopsticks at Junho like she’d just made an airtight legal argument.
“Which means you clearly don’t.”
“I never claimed to,” Junho said, entirely unbothered, already reaching for seconds like the whole exchange hadn’t happened at all.
The apartment stayed loud and warm long after the food was gone, plates stacked in the sink, everyone too comfortable to leave just yet.
Somi ended up sprawled sideways across the couch, scrolling through her phone with her feet in Junho’s lap, neither of them seeming to mind.
Yuna had claimed the armchair entirely, headphones back on now, though she still glanced up every so often to throw in a comment.
Jihoon stayed by the counter longer than anyone else, in no particular hurry to leave, watching the room settle into its usual noise like he was cataloging it for later.
“You’re staring again,” Ishaan said, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“Still supervising,” Jihoon said.
“There’s nothing left to supervise.
Dinner’s over.”
“I’ll find something,” Jihoon said, and didn’t move from his spot by the counter.
Outside, the city had gone dark hours ago, streetlights flickering on one by one below the window, the apartment full of noise that felt, for the first time in what seemed like a very long while, completely ordinary.