The Logic of Haunting

Chapter 2: The Logic of Haunting

Elias didn’t sleep. He spent the night staring at the wall where Min-ho—or the entity claiming to be Min-ho—was currently sitting cross-legged on the ceiling.

"Doesn't that give you a headache?" Elias asked, tapping furiously at his tablet. He was running a deep-scan of the apartment’s smart-home network, looking for hidden projectors, magnetic field disruptions, or hallucinogenic gas leaks.

"No blood flow, no headache," Min-ho replied cheerfully. He was "sitting" upside down, his yellow sweater defying gravity by hanging upward toward the floor. "It’s actually quite peaceful. The view is better from up here."

Elias ignored him. He had compiled a spreadsheet.

The "Min-ho" Observation Log

Variable

Observation

Visibility

Only visible to Subject A (Elias).

Physicality

Non-corporeal. Passes through solid matter.

Audibility

Voice is clear, but doesn't show up on audio recordings.

Interaction

Can move small objects (the mug) with extreme focus.

"You're a glitch," Elias muttered, more to himself than to the ghost. "A sophisticated, high-definition hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and too much synthetic taurine."

Min-ho drifted down, flipping mid-air to land soundlessly on the floor. He leaned over Elias’s shoulder, peering at the screen. "A glitch? That’s a bit cold, don't you think? I remember things, Elias. I remember the smell of rain on hot asphalt. I remember the taste of overly sweet peach tea. Hallucinations don't have memories of peach tea."

"Memories are just data," Elias countered, though his hand trembled slightly as Min-ho’s "aura" sent a chill through his arm. "If I can figure out the source of the data, I can figure out how to delete it."

Min-ho’s smile faltered for the first time. It was a small, fragile thing. "Delete me? I just got here."

"You're dead," Elias said, finally looking him in the eye. Min-ho’s eyes were a deep, soulful brown—too detailed for a hallucination. "If you're a ghost, you're a lingering energy. You're supposed to have 'unfinished business.' We find the business, we finish it, you go... wherever ghosts go. That’s the logic."

Min-ho hummed, pacing the small perimeter of the office. "Unfinished business. I don't know. I feel like I'm waiting for something. Or someone." He paused, looking at a dusty digital camera sitting on Elias’s bookshelf—a relic Elias had kept from his college days but never used. "Maybe I just wanted to take one more perfect picture."

Elias looked at the camera, then back at the boy who shouldn't exist. "Fine. We’ll try your 'Bucket List' theory. If I help you do these things, and you don't disappear..."

"Then what?" Min-ho asked, stepping into Elias’s personal space.

Elias felt the air turn thin and cold. "Then I’m checking myself into a psychiatric ward."

Min-ho laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a storm. "Deal. First item on the list: I want to see the sunrise from the rooftop. I haven't seen the sun in a long time."

As Elias stood up to grab his jacket, he noticed something strange on his monitor. The spreadsheet he’d been working on was flickering. For a split second, the text didn't say Non-corporeal.

It said

NULL_POINTER_EXCEPTION.

He blinked, and it was back to normal. Just a trick of the light.

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