Ch. 14 - Fourth Ghost Story - Mom (2)

Badump, badump.

The apartment building Sunah lived in was right next to the school.

Although it was a little embarrassing because I was wearing slippers, I still hurried while avoiding the people’s sight.

‘I’m going over to a female classmate’s house to play? I am?’

After reaching the point where the school came into view, I could see that Sunah, who was way up front, had come out to pick me up.

A cute girl was waiting outside to pick me up and invite me to her house.

This was the first time in my several lives that this had happened to me.

It was worth living a long life.

‘Huuu, let’s calm down, Lee Joon!’

Although I had just encountered a scary situation at home, social life was social life.

At the time, I was in a school uniform with only slippers on and no backpack.

I had to at least act normal.

It was because we weren’t that close yet.

“Huh? Joon? You came quickly!”

Sunah was standing in front of the school’s front gates when she discovered me and smiled.

“Yeah, I had nowhere to go and I happened to be walking around, so I came here quite quickly.”

Hearing this, Sunah laughed again before she started to mumble.

“So you see……”

“Yeah?”

“My house… It’s a big mess……”

“Ah, it’s fine! It’s fine!”

I quickly waved my hands.

“We don’t have to go to your house! I was also worrying that I was bothering you, and was wondering what to do. Haha.”

Actually, I was feeling that it was a shame that I couldn’t go!

Sob.

“Just you coming out here for me like this is more than enough to make me thankful. Spending time chatting with you will make the time go by in a breeze.”

Instead of responding, Sunah pondered to herself for a bit before coming to a decision, showing off a determined expression.

“No! Let’s go to my house and sit around there. It’s pretty cold outside……”

“R-really? I’m really okay.”

“You can come……”

“You really don’t have to go out of your way, for real.”

Then Sunah walked up to me and replied, her fists clenched tight.

“When I entered high school… I wanted to fix my personality, so……”

“Aah, haha. Is that so~? Well, I think your personality is fine, though.”

“It’s this way……”

And somehow, I started following Sunah’s lead.

‘Hmm. So that’s how it is.’

I was the only one overly excited about this situation.

Sunah was purely worried about a friend who had nowhere to go, and in order to overcome her reserved personality, she had thought of inviting a newly made friend over to her house.

‘Why couldn’t I also have had pure thoughts?’

My past self seemed so stupid, worrying about such things.

I shook my head and followed behind Sunah.

When I saw the apartment building Sunah lived in, I began to wonder to myself again.

‘People actually live in this place?’

Of course, I was sure people did live there.

It was just that I had thought that it was a world unrelated to me.

A place like that was just a place that I would pass by in life, something in the background. I had never thought too deeply about it.

A small sentry box that seemed like it was once the security office was in a state of ruin, with all of the glass having been broken. The sidewalk blocks were all flipped around and weeds were growing knee high.

The apartment building was about five to six stories high.

The height was barely tall enough to call it a villa, but because it was uselessly wide it could be called an apartment building.

If you considered that most apartment buildings nowadays were twenty to thirty stories tall, it was quite shabby in comparison.

Not to mention the outside walls of the building were covered in so much ivy that the building number couldn’t be seen.

‘… Incredible.’

There were several suspicious and unknown marks scattered here and there.

If I took a picture and posted it on the internet with the title ‘Haunted house special: An abandoned apartment building in Korea’, it would definitely start trending.

To think my friend lived in a place like that.

I lost all words.

Of course, my family wasn’t too well off, either. We were strictly middle class, but I had never had any connections to an original abandoned haunted house like this.

“This way……”

“Yeah.”

While following Sunah, who was walking step-by-step and clutching her bag strap, I could see a few elderly people that seemed a bit out of it sitting blankly on a moss covered bench.

‘Yeah. With this, it’s worth considering whether you should bring your friend home or not.’

Despite all that, I was thankful to Sunah for inviting me to her home.

There were no elevators in the building.

As I followed Sunah up the stairs, I spoke as smoothly as I could.

“Thank you very much for inviting me Sunah. I will make sure to return the favor.”

“Yeah……”

Sunah dragged out the end of her sentence again, and I thought that she must be worrying whether or not her friend was disappointed.

Fine.

Today’s objective was to not show any signs of disappointment, and to show that I was able to comfortably hang out just like Sunah wanted!

The moment I decided that, I saw things like earthen jars, rice sacks clogging the hallways, and an empty cart and a flat soccer ball blocking the stairs.

“Be careful……”

“Y-yeah.”

Sunah’s house was at the very end of the hall.

On her front door there were delivery booklets, locksmith service advertisement stickers, real estate ads, delivery service ads, and lots of other stuff attached to the door as either stickers, magnets or posters.

And next to all of that, there was a broken doorbell.

I realized something as I saw Sunah take out a key and open the door.

‘Nowadays, everyone uses a keypad lock. The reason that my random excuse about losing my keys worked was this……’

As I walked into Sunah’s house, I purposefully gave a greeting in a loud voice.

“Hello~!”

“There’s no one here……”

“Haha, is that so~?”

I chuckled in embarrassment.

“What about your grandmother? Didn’t you say you lived together?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Yesterday, when you were late, you said that it was because your grandmother didn’t wake you up.”

“Me? Did I say that……?”

Oh right.

I could sense that I had screwed up my timelines.

After that conversation, I had died by the Laughing Woman and time had turned back. Afterwards, we didn’t speak about her grandmother.

How confusing.

Thankfully, Sunah only tilted her head in confusion and glossed over it.

“Grandma went to visit the hospital, so she won’t be back until evening……”

“I see~ Haha, ah! Is that your room?”

I thought that speaking about her grandmother’s hospital visit would make things depressing, so I quickly changed topics.

“Yeah, this is my room……”

“Wow~ Can I go in?”

Sunah nodded as she giggled.

Sunah’s room was really plain.

She had given up any girly articles, and did not even have a bed or computer.

On an old desk there was an odd joke book that looked about ten years old, and a worn out middle school reference book.

However, giving off the feeling that I thought there wasn’t much there wouldn’t have been proper manners! Especially not from a visiting friend.

I quickly scanned the room to find something worth starting a conversation about, when I noticed something.

“Ah! It’s a graduation album! Can I look through this?”

“Hehe, go ahead.”

Sunah’s middle school graduation album! I thoroughly searched through the album and found Sunah’s middle school picture.

A young looking face, round eyes. An expression that seemed like she has no confidence.

It was no different from right now.

“It’s identical. Wait, isn’t that obvious?"

Since it was a photo from just last year.

“You’re right, hahaha……”

“How did you spend your days in middle school?”

“……”

Sunah suddenly stopped speaking.

I noticed the change and quickly closed the album, grabbing the odd joke book from the desk.

Maybe she was bullied. Let’s pass over this quickly.

“Hahahaha. What is this book? How old is this book?”

“That’s pretty funny.”

After seeing the worn out book, Sunah started giggling again.

I started looking through the book.

“Let me see. What is the money grandfathers like called?”

“Grandmoney."

[T/N: The Korean word for grandmother is ‘halmoni’. The joke was that grandpas like ‘hal-money’.]

“Which witch is the tastiest witch?”

“A sandwich.”

“Hahaha. You know all of this. You must have read it a lot.”

“Pfft.”

I suddenly imagined the scene of a lonely Sunah, who had nothing better to do, reading the joke book to kill time. It suddenly made me feel sad.

‘Damn. A bunch of things keeps dampening the mood! Let’s gloss over this quickly, too. It seems I can’t senselessly mention anything.’

We left the room, passing the cramped kitchen and entering the living room.

Possibly because her grandmother used this room, there was an electric under-blanket spread out and I could see an old-fashioned fan.

Thankfully there was a TV, although it was an old CRT TV that was difficult to find these days.

“Let’s watch TV, Sunah! I wonder what movies are playing?”

“……”

The remote control was broken, so it was only after I had fiddled with the channel knob that I realized.

Sunah’s TV service didn’t have the movie channel.

Besides a few of the free-to-air channels, everything else only showed static.

That was why she was silent when I mentioned movies just now.

“Ah, haha. KBS… KBS……”

“……”

Hometown Report was airing.

[T/N: Hometown Report is a show that has reporters go to various small towns or neighborhoods throughout the nation and introduce them.]

The other channel showed a home shopping show selling vacuum cleaners.

‘Well f*ck. How is nothing working out for me?’

Even just a graze was a critical hit.

With nothing else we could do, we sat there with the Hometown Report on.

The interview of an old grandfather who had served during the Vietnam War but got hemorrhoids began to drag on.

“……”

“……”

After letting out a sigh, we turned off the TV.

The only sound that could be heard in the house was the refrigerator running.

Sunah and I were sitting silently on the electric under-blanket.

The late afternoon sunlight shone into the poor household. While we were silently sitting there, Sunah spoke first.

“Our house is quite poor, right? And there is nothing fun to do……”

“……”

How was I supposed to respond to that?

I was pondering over what to do, so I decided to just truthfully ask what I was curious about.

“Hey, Sunah? What do you usually spend your time doing after school?”

“……”

“I’m just purely curious about this. I am, hmm……”

Let’s just be honest.

“I am curious about what you spend your time doing. What you do to have fun, what hobbies you have…”

Sunah, who had only been staring at the blank TV screen until that point, turned her head to look at me.

“What you do with your time from after school until you go to sleep, what type of thoughts you have, what type of person you want to be, I just want to know. I’m just… curious about all that.”

“……”

Silence temporarily settled in.

“……”

“……”

Then Sunah, who had been in a daze, raised her head slightly. She cleared her throat and had an expression of contemplation on her face.

“Yesterday… I came home and got changed… and just hung out around the neighborhood? Then I ate dinner and went straight to bed, I think……”

“……”

“Because I went to sleep too early, I woke up at dawn, and I couldn’t get back to sleep… I fell asleep again when morning came.”

Was that why she was late today?

It might have been the same reason she was late the day before, as well.

“The day before… What did I do……?”

Sunah scrunched her brows as she tried to remember, before letting out a sigh.

“Sorry. I don’t remember……”

I nodded without a word.

Sunah, who always had a lethargic expression.

I thought she was just spending every day going with the flow, without any thoughts.

[Your understanding of the character Yoon Sunah has increased by 10.]

“Sunah.”

“Yeah?”

“Even if our Ghost Story Club doesn’t get accepted, let’s both join the same club.”

“……!”

Although Sunah seemed surprised, she smiled as she nodded her head.

“Yup! It’d be great to do that……!”

“Let’s definitely do that! Hahaha.”

“Ahaha.”

My objective had been to avoid bothering the dirt spoon girl about her situation and to present a comfortable image, but I guess it was inevitable.

However, as we both revealed our minds to each other, we had actually become more comfortable with each other.

Afterwards, as if I had come to my grandmother’s house out in the sticks, I horsed around in Sunah’s house—doing things like playing around with the blankets in the closet, or speaking about our memories as we looked at the Pokémon stickers on her fridge.

***

“Ahahaha, be safe on your way home! Today was a lot of fun!”

“I also had a lot of fun! Thanks a lot, Sunah!”

“Not at all. Ahaha.”

I waved my hands wildly as I said farewell to Sunah, who had come out to the apartment building entrance to see me off.

“Next time I’ll buy you something good, so see you tomorrow!”

“Yup, get home safely~! Goodbye~!”

I started thinking as I made my way home in a good mood.

‘Either my Mom or Dad should have come home by now.’

That thing pretending to be Mom…

It should definitely be fine if I went inside with my parents, right?

In the movies, ghosts usually appeared and surprised people when they were alone, and disappeared when they were together with their family.

So if I went home together with my parents, the plain house would be waiting for us as if nothing happened.

‘… Will that really happen?’

It wasn’t a movie, but real life.

The unusual happenings occurring in my life…

As I thought about it again, I realized that it couldn’t be explained by the ideological shape of a ghost.

It was especially true when I thought about the three-hundred-people head explosion case or the Laughing Woman in the ‘Manual ghost story’.

Those phenomena called ghost stories…

They did not hide away even if there was a crowd of people, instead showing off their influence.

‘Does that mean, perhaps……’

I did vaguely think that not much would happen if I was with my parents, but I could have been mistaken.

Like the phenomena before, that thing could take the shape of Mom and show up to threaten us.

‘… My parents are in danger.’

I quickly took out my phone and called Mom.

[Hello? Joon?]

Mom was thankfully still on her way home on the bus.

Then I called my Dad.

Beep- beep-

Only the signal noises rang out.

Beep- beep-

Dad wasn’t picking up.

I picked up the pace as I headed home.

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