Ishaan’s phone rang while he still had one arm halfway into his shirt.
“Dude, where are you?” Junho’s voice came through loud, already sounding like he was walking somewhere fast.
“Getting ready,” Ishaan said, phone wedged between his ear and shoulder.
“Come down.
I’ve got the car ready.
You don’t have one, right?”
“No, I just take the train.”
“Of course you do.” Junho sighed like this personally inconvenienced him.
“Fine, we’ll swing by.
Two minutes, not one second more.”
“Get your ass down here, then.
Come fast.
If we don’t get there before the demon rises, we’re all getting an earful.”
“The demon?” Ishaan asked, pulling his shoes on one-handed.
“Yes, the demon.
The Anchor.
The CEO of our very lovely office.” Junho’s voice dropped lower, like he was sharing a secret.
“Man’s cranky in the mornings.
Come quick.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
“Don’t worry about breakfast, by the way.
Canteen back at the office does something decent most mornings.”
“Wait, I thought we weren’t going to the office—”
The line had already gone dead.
He grabbed his bag, turned off the lights, and ran.
Downstairs, a black car sat idling at the curb, Junho leaning out the window waving him over.
Somi sat in the front seat, and Yuna was already in the back, scrolling through her phone.
“Where’s Baek?” Ishaan asked, once he’d gotten the seatbelt on.
“Comes in his own car,” Junho said.
“Doesn’t trust anyone else’s driving.
Especially not mine.”
“He’s not wrong to worry,” Somi said.
“I have never once crashed,” Junho said.
“You clipped a mailbox last month.”
“The mailbox was in the wrong place.”
Ishaan climbed in and pulled the door shut.
“Where are we even going?”
“Old records building,” Somi said, not looking up from her tablet.
“Munhwa Archive.
Owner wants it cleared for renovation, standard sweep first.”
“Standard sweep,” Ishaan repeated.
“Basic check.
In, look around, out.” Junho glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
“Most of these turn out fine.
Building’s old, people get spooked, we come confirm there’s nothing to be spooked about.”
“Most of the time,” Somi added, in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t going to elaborate further.
“Can I ask something?” Ishaan said.
“How did you all even end up doing this?
Like, actually end up here.”
“My dad’s the chairman,” Junho said.
“Kind of hard to hide it from your own kid.
And Jihoon and I have been friends since we were six, so I already knew I’d end up working with him eventually.”
“I came in as a regular interior designer,” Yuna said.
“Said something out loud on a job that I shouldn’t have been able to know.
Word travels fast in this building, apparently.
Got pulled aside within a week.”
“I walked a plot for a wind analysis,” Somi said.
“Said out loud that it felt cursed.
He was standing right there, apparently, though I didn’t even notice him at first.
Asked how I knew that.
I tried explaining, and I guess that was enough.”
“So none of us really applied for this,” Junho said.
“We just kind of got absorbed into it.”
“Absorbed is a strong word,” Somi said.
“It’s accurate, though.”
“So wait,” Ishaan said.
“Is this whole company actually for supernatural stuff, then?
Like, is that the real business?”
Yuna pulled her headphones down around her neck.
“Nope.
“So how does this side of things even fit in?
If it’s a real estate company.”
“We’re basically insurance nobody knows they’re paying for,” Somi said.
“Property looks fine on paper, deal goes through, nobody outside this floor ever finds out why it went so smoothly.”
“Do the other office members know?
The ones downstairs?”
“Not a clue,” Junho said.
“As far as they’re concerned, we’re just some specialty consulting team.
Boring, normal, nothing to look twice at.”
“What about business partners?
People buying or selling the land?”
“God, no,” Somi said.
“You start saying words like curse or cursed land to a client, watch how fast they run.
Easier to just say everything checked out fine.”
“So don’t people ever ask what you actually do?” Ishaan asked.
“All the time,” Junho said.
“We just say we’re the best of the best.
The CEO’s right hand people.
When he goes anywhere important, we go with him.
Sounds impressive enough that nobody digs deeper.”
“Before we get there,” Junho added, glancing at him.
“You call him Mr.
Kang.
Surname only.
None of the casual stuff we do.”
“Why are you telling me this specifically?”
“Because you’re his assistant.
So you’re the one who’s going to be saying it the most.” Junho counted off on his fingers.
“Call him that in front of anyone outside the floor.
Bring him coffee, black, one sugar cube.
That’s genuinely it.
That’s the whole job description most days.”
Junho’s phone rang before Ishaan could ask anything else.
He put it on speaker and set it in the cupholder.
“Where are you guys?” Baek’s voice crackled through.
“I’m already here.
I think it’s a dead spot.
Nothing’s registering.”
“You sure about that?” Junho asked, pulling out into traffic.
“Pretty sure.”
“Let’s still come,” Yuna said, leaning toward the phone.
“Remember the last place someone called a dead spot?
Wasn’t a dead spot.”
“Oh, that was bad,” Somi said, laughing.
“You remember what happened after that?”
“Don’t remind me,” Junho said, though he was grinning.
“I still have the scar.”
“You do not have a scar,” Somi said.
“I have an emotional scar.”
“You screamed for a full minute and then cried in the car,” Somi said.
“That’s not a scar, that’s a Tuesday for you.”
“I was processing,” Junho said with great dignity.
“You were sobbing about a moth,” Somi said.
“It was a big moth.”
“So if one of you goes and doesn’t find anything, the rest of you still show up anyway?” Ishaan asked, leaning forward between the seats.
“Pretty much every time,” Somi said.
“Unless it’s something we’ve already cleared before, obviously.”
“It’s not really about doubting him,” Junho said.
“It’s just, none of us can actually see these things.
Well, except you now.
So when it’s just one of us checking, we’re going off feeling and instinct, not proof.”
“So you go back multiple times just to be sure,” Ishaan said, starting to piece it together.
“Exactly.
And we can’t walk up to the Anchor and say ‘nothing’s there’ if we’re not actually sure,” Somi added.
“Angry CEO makes for a very bad day for everyone.”
“He’s not scary angry,” Yuna said.
“He’s more the quiet, disappointed kind.
Somehow worse.”
“Much worse,” Junho agreed.
“I’d rather he yell.
The silent stare is a whole different punishment.”
“He did that to me for a week once,” Somi said.
“Over a report that was two hours late.”
“Character building,” Junho said.
“I nearly quit,” Somi said.
“But Baek’s already there,” Ishaan said.
“Is it really necessary for the rest of you to go too?”
“Yes,” Yuna said, simply, like the question didn’t need more of an answer than that.
The building came into view a few minutes later, squat and gray, half its windows boarded over with plywood.
A faded sign above the door still read MUNHWA DISTRICT RECORDS in peeling paint.
Baek was waiting by the front doors, arms crossed, looking unimpressed with all of them.
“Told you.
Nothing here.”
“We’ll still look,” Junho said, already walking past him.
“Suit yourself,” Baek said, falling into step behind them anyway.
“How long have you been out here?” Ishaan asked him.
“Twenty minutes.
Walked the whole first floor twice.” Baek shrugged.
“Figured I’d wait for backup before writing the report either way, just in case.”
Inside, the air smelled like old paper and dust that hadn’t moved in years.
Rows of metal filing cabinets lined the walls, most drawers hanging open and empty, a few still stuffed with yellowed folders nobody had touched in decades.
Sunlight came in thin and gray through the boarded windows, cutting stripes across the floor.
Their footsteps echoed off the bare concrete, too loud in a room this empty.
A water stain spread across half the ceiling, brown rings marking years of slow leaks nobody had ever bothered fixing.
They spread out across the room, Ishaan walking with them this time instead of drifting off on his own, checking corners and ceiling and the dark gaps between cabinets right alongside everyone else.
Junho crouched by an old desk, running a hand along the underside like he was checking for something taped there, then straightened up with a shrug.
“I only know how to make talismans and trinkets, guys.
I don’t feel anything either way.
Never have.”
Yuna stood still with her eyes shut, headphones off completely.
A long moment passed before she spoke.
“Something feels off.
I can’t point to what, exactly.
Just…
off.”
“Off how?” Ishaan asked.
“I don’t know.
That’s the annoying part.” She opened her eyes, frowning at nothing in particular.
Somi crouched near the baseboards, scrolling through readings on her tablet.
“Land’s not cursed, at least not by anything I’m picking up.
No history flags, nothing residual coming through.”
Baek stood in the center of the room, eyes half closed, arms loose at his sides.
“I’m not getting any intent off this place.
No malice, no want, nothing pushing back at me at all.”
“So basically,” Ishaan said, “nobody’s actually sure.”
“Welcome to the job,” Somi said.
They waited a few minutes more, nobody quite willing to be the one to say it was safe to leave yet.
The building stayed exactly as quiet as it had been the whole time, dust hanging still in the thin bars of light.
Kang Jihoon’s car pulled up outside, and he walked in a minute later, coat still buttoned despite the warm morning.
He stopped just past the doorway, head tilting slightly.
“There’s something weird about this place,” he said, mostly to himself.
“We’re not picking up much either,” Junho said.
“Everyone’s kind of stuck on maybe.”
Kang Jihoon turned to Ishaan instead of answering that.
“Did you see anything?”
“No.
I did a normal sweep, nothing stood out.”
“Normal sweep means every corner, floor to ceiling.
Did you look up?
Actually look, not just glance.”
Ishaan hesitated.
“…No.
I didn’t do that part.”
“Then do that part.”
Everyone spread out again without being told twice, heads tilted back this time, eyes tracing along the tops of shelves and the dark gaps near the ceiling.
Ishaan moved along the far wall, past the tallest row of cabinets, and stopped.
Above the highest shelf, tucked into the shadowed gap near the ceiling, something dark sat perfectly still, folded into itself like it had been there the whole time, waiting to see who would notice first.
Ishaan didn’t scream.
He wasn’t sure screaming would do anything at all.
He just lifted one hand, slow, and pointed straight up at it, standing completely still.