Jimin opened his eyes, only to be utterly disappointed. The last two times he had woken up, he found himself in the same place. The same alienic, dark, dubious and disquieting room. It was arduous to even confirm if it was a room he was in, could be nowhere in a nowhere, dark jungle as well. The feeling of the solid concrete against his back was the only negation to the thought.

Jimin did not think it was real. Often, he had felt like he was forgotten in some unmapped abyss when he was under the influence of substance. The argument because of which he neglected his duty in a confirmation. The previous times he had found himself there, he let it slide and went back to sleep, hoping to wake up to full-consciousness. He knew that much that his periods of sleep weren't too quick-intervaled. How his body was managing to fight back an urge for hunger was beyond him!

But now he knew he was really at an unrecognized, nightmarish and what had more prospects to be an uninhabitable abode.

Though it was dimly lit, in fact not lit at all( there had to be an external source of light), Jimin could capture the surroundings( with strained eyes, that was). He was in a small six-sided cuboidal enclosure with one closed, glass-paned window and an open door. Perhaps a bedroom, just without the belongings and essence of an inhabited one. The wall adjacent to his form was stained with both nucleated and scattered dusted-patterns, and distinctive spurts of some colour darker than that of the time-worn, painted wall. The obvious, displeasing odour was marring his smell-receptors.  

Jimin approached the window to have a look at the atmosphere beyond the facade. It was dark outside as well, there were no working street lights. Possibly a power cut, he ensured himself. There was no moon. Most unusually, the sky was stark black, dark as a raven, not Prussian, not purple, not grey, absolutely not glittered in stars. But he could still visualize everything, the surroundings weren't as dull as closed eyes.

Jimin found himself walking further into the house. When he crossed the room, he realized it wasn't just his room that was devoid of dust, darkness and companionship. It wasn't a single-storeyed house, he confirmed when he saw the staircase. He wondered which of his work-friends even lived in the house. Or was he kidnapped and held captive in the abandoned house? Again, who would kidnap a knocked out man they might've found on the streets, he did not know of. If he was right, the last time he injected himself was when he was in Sera's office.

"Is anyone here?" he shouted out. "Hello? Whose house is this? Why am I here? Anyone?"

There wasn't any movement at all. No sound. Not in the house he was in, not from the outside, no sound of even a vehicle. Jimin's voice didn't even reverberate in the fairly big and empty house of walls, floors and ceilings, but no furniture and movables. 

Jimin was a bit scared when he opened the main door of the house and exited. He looked around. The fencing on either side transitioned to other houses. He could see, as he walked away from the patio to the gate, that it was just a regular street in any of Seoul's residential areas. He had been scared but he was relaxing. It looked like the high profile residential locality, like the one where Sera lived. 

All the houses seemed unlit from the outside, and were tranquil. 

'Maybe everyone's sleeping. Must be way late than midnight now. And a no moon and a power cut night,' Jimin ensured himself in his head.

When he crossed the gate and caught a view of the extending street, his eyes widened at something. Paralysed on the ground, breath caught in his throat, skin turning pale, he looked at the silhouette of a blood-curdling, deformed, ghoul-like form that stood at as meagre as a few feet away from him. To his pure horror!

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When Sera had learned about the spirit, her already neurotic mind temporarily suffered a derailment. For someone who'd avenge for even an evil eye directed to the lovely Jimin, it was very, very much to sink in. It wasn't that Sera hadn't ever met someone such as Kim Namjoon. But the specified persona was an evil spirit to add to the savagery of the once, just a human.

The information she had received from Seokjin was a bit to take in. She did some research of her own as well, and expectedly, it only heightened the burden and burn on her mind and heart.

Kim Namjoon had been a youth of 23 when he died. An unsolved murder case, body found at the landfill. He was an active criminal and member of the then notorious hitmen gang led by Gong Gitak. Had butchered men and women and did the gruesomest of crimes, as per the intuitive police and unidentified sources; but in the court of law had never been mutated from an accused to the guilty. In his adult years, that was; He had spent the 8 years of his early life in Gimcheon Juvenile Correctional Institution, however. One of his most famous accused crimes and the closest one that to the time of his death was the Angel's Orphanage case. The said orphanage was wholly, and with the mass people inside, set on fire.

Other untestified sources had added to the man's profile's additional knowledge, no better for the critique of his character anyway. In many of them, he was often termed a 'psychopath' or similar. The orphanage he set on fire was the very one he grew up in and the one which landed him in the juvenile prison for the killing of his orphanage mate at the age of 8. He was also said to have been the murderer of his friend and boss, Gong Gitak's only son.

Because Sera had been very anxious knowing all the history and because Seokjin himself was aware of the potential of the evil spirit, Sera gained Seokjin's promise in help. And because there were multiple options, and practice and plannings were necessary, Seokjin asked for study and preparation time of a few days. He confirmed there were ways to help Jimin, risky as it might be. But there was one thing he said to Sera she could not have afforded to neglect; Seokjin didn't and wouldn't know how much time Jimin had left.

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There had been noises of grazing, tapping and screeching that was disturbing her subconscious. Though Hyejin wasn't one of the sound sleepers, not for the first few hours she would spend on the bed, she wasn't being aware and alert of the danger she was unintentionally availing.

When she snapped open her lids, she screeched for a nanosecond after which her mouth was covered by an alert, strong hand. Her eyes widened at the glance of the owner.

"Shh!" the voice demanded, hand slowly traced back from her mouth.

"Oh my God! I really really don't know why and how you're here but you should leave. There's a limit for everything, you're creeping me out, just get up already," Hyejin said, regaining her breath.

The man smirked and took a sip of the alcohol, rather gulped as for some reason he was hesitating for the lip-to-glass contact. The glass, Hyejin recognized, was hers but she had no idea about the bottle of Scotch that was on her bedside table. The man was luxuriously sat on the chair, facing the side of her bed. On his other hand, was a lighted cigarette he took a puff of. She eyed the typical white latex gloves he was wearing, her mind was running wild with theories.

"You played your part, now it's time for me to play." He rested the unfinished peg on the table and put the cigarette stick in his pocket. "I hate that I cannot finish it, you know. It's my favourite brand," he said and traced a lighter from the same pocket. Grabbing her hair harshly, he began lighting the end of it.

"What the hell are you doing! Are you being insane now!" Hyejin panic-shouted. The prospect of it all being a prank depreciated and skipped her mind.

"Maybe a small punishment would do, maybe not. I haven't decided. So comply, won't you?"

Hyejin tried to tug back her hair but the action only fueled the ritual; the man pulled it such that her head collided rough on the table's sharp corner. She was sure that her nose had broken. And crying to the situation and the pain, only encouraged for a tight grip around her throat.

"Don't!" he growled. But how was a frail woman to be the epitome of such bravery!  It was easier to act such in front of the cameras. 

"I said don't fucking cry!" Hyejin winced when she received a head-spinning slap on the side of her head, her ear, to be precise.

"Please..." she begged, still incompetent at mastering the control on her tear glands.

"Oh, no, no, no." He freed her neck and stretched his hands in front of him. "I'm not satisfied yet. Usually, bullets are my best friend, but I intend to keep a low profile for a while. So I brought this." The man forced up a wooden baseball bat from the floor.

Hyejin had given up on her reasoning brain, it could not have been the man she'd known all these years. He was kind, gentle and empathetic, even if he rarely paraded it; he had liked her, like she did.

"This is a blemish to my standard, a metal rod would have been the one, you know. But this bat is more likely to ensure just the internal injuries, isn't it? Low profile, remember?" The man's annoying chuckle reverberated.

"I'm not much of a talker, so let's begin."

By the time he stood up and uncreased his clothes, Hyejin took the opportunity to abscond the room, only to accept a blow on her shoulder when she nearly reached the kitchen. 

Swallowing up the pain, she continued to run away with a screeching throat; the other preparing for another blow. With a swing of his hand, he managed to swish through the air, as Hyejin successfully missed the attack. She had made up her mind. With a weaker body and a heightened will to escape her abuser, her weary limbs opened the apartment door and ran to the hall.

She began screaming, hoping to wake up the sleeping floor on the apartment building. The man was seconds away from her(unable to swing the bat as he ran), both of them sprinting in their constant speeds. 

Approaching the stairs was easier than the elevator in the nearly neck and neck scenario, and so she did. But he had given up on his focus on the bat, instead caught up and pushed the woman just she reached the top of the stairs.

With her noisy scream and the thud of her body at the feet of the stairs, an apartment door swang open. The man spent no time in fleeing; he ran after, as a proof-seeing, eyeing the gore-covered body of crawling and struggling Hyejin to survive from her possibly last breath on earth.

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