Chapter Text
It's not a memoir, Yoongi tells himself.
Of course it isn't, he's not even fully sure what's going on. He came here to write music, not… whatever this is.
He’d told himself the move was practical. There's lower noise for recording, fewer reporters, fewer hospital visits he needs to disguise as “checkups.” The truth, though, was uglier: the city had started to sound like his own pulse on reverb. Out here, at least, the echoes belonged to someone else.
Sure, the house is old and the floors complain and the walls hum when the wind’s too strong. Maybe he has regrets about this move to the countryside. In fact, he’s starting to think the silence he wanted so badly is just another kind of noise.
The village had looked harmless on paper: population three hundred, a single grocery store, post office that still closed at noon. The realtor called it “quiet with a personality.” Yoongi was learning that “personality” meant cracked plaster, faulty wiring, and a sense that the house was still thinking about whoever lived here last.
The realtor—Seokjin, loud and charming in that way people who love commission are—had given him a key with a chipped ceramic tag shaped like a heart. “Locals call it the Lark House,” he’d said brightly. “Used to belong to a musician. Perfect for you, right?”
Yoongi had ignored the way the man’s tone faltered halfway through used to. He wishes he'd asked just a bit more about what he was getting himself into, but caution has never been his strong suit.
The mug beside him rattles once. Just a little tremor, the kind that could be wind, if the windows weren’t closed. He stares at it long enough to watch the coffee ripple, then still.
Outside, the grass whips sideways, long blades brushing the warped fence in steady rhythm. The field behind the house stretches into a haze. It's a glorious expanse of golds and greens that looks like it could swallow sound whole, and he wishes for a moment that he could go lie in it, let himself sink into the earth instead of this long, drawn out process. Somewhere, a crow cries once, far too clear for how far away it should be.
Earlier that morning, the radio had flickered on before Yoongi had even left the bed. Naturally, no one had touched it. There was a crackle, like a burst of static, followed by something like laughter—bright, careless, so quick it could have been the wind if he hadn’t grown up with laughter that sounded exactly like that. He hadn't stopped thinking about it since.
This, though, is the reason he has a pen in his hand. Yoongi doesn’t look up at the sound, simply puts the notebook away, going back to the book he was reading before.
“Nope,” he mutters, standing up.
The mug lifts half an inch off the table, hesitates, then drops with a sharp clink.
“Absolutely not,” Yoongi says to no one, already walking out of the room. Behind him, the mug rolls lazily in a perfect half circle, as if following.
It began slow, as most things tend to do. He had moved in at a time when he had been sleep-deprived for roughly a decade. Consequently, it came with its own side effects, most of which he had gotten used to, including the occasional hallucination. So, he didn't think much of it when he'd catch a glimpse of someone in an empty room, or something floating a little bit when he looked away. He'd dealt with this shit throughout his life; it was fine. Barely noticeable, if you ask him.
What did bother him, though, was the state of the plumbing in the house. And the electric work. And—really, everything.
He's never been known as a particularly cheerful person, and his years in an industry filled with liars and hypocrites have only hardened him. I mean, his title as the 'Snow Prince' stuck for more reasons than just his pale skin, and they're not all sweet or superficial.
However, the house is really testing him. Like more than any record label CEO ever did, and that's saying something. It's like every room he goes into, a new corner starts demanding maintenance.
God, no wonder this place has been abandoned for decades.
Yoongi will have to have a word with his staff; there’s no way they thought this place was up and running enough for him to shift here already. It’s one thing not to be used to the countryside, his new setting, but it’s completely another to live in a rundown house in what feels like the middle of nowhere.
The nearest neighbor is half a kilometer away; an elderly man named Mr. Choi, who spends his mornings sweeping leaves that immediately fall again. He’d waved once when Yoongi arrived, shouting something about “the singing walls” before his voice got lost to the wind. Yoongi had chalked it up to rural eccentricity and shut the gate.
Sometimes he regrets that.
Today, he's decided to fix the kitchen.
Second to the music studio at his old house, the kitchen is where he spent the most time. And of course, now, with a strict diet plan to follow, thanks to his recent discoveries, he doesn't want this place to feel like a nightmare at least.
Everyone thinks Yoongi is already compromising (it's for his own selfish interests, but still) by not having a personal chef move in with him; he doesn't need his mother yelling at him again when she sees what he's opting for instead of gourmet meals in a fine-dining environment.
So, here he is, crouched in front of the sink, trying to figure out where the hell the constant dripping sound is coming from, especially when there is no water to be seen. No, seriously, with the way it's been going on for hours, if not days, he should've found at least a puddle near the pipe—but no, nothing.
Just one of this place's oddities, he supposes. Like the stairs that creak even when no one's near. Namjoon thinks it gives the house character, but Yoongi doesn't care, because he hates this character. It's getting in the way of his main plot.
He straightens slowly, knees protesting. The smell of metal and mildew clings to the air, faint but constant. Outside, the wind shifts direction; the hum of the pipes fades, only to be replaced by something that sounds suspiciously like whistling.
It’s faint, tuneless, and maddeningly cheerful. He doesn’t look up. “If this is how psychosis starts,” he mutters, “I’d like to unsubscribe.”
The whistle stops. He exhales, tension uncoiling from his shoulders…until the whistle picks up again, from the opposite corner of the kitchen, distinctly higher-pitched now, like mockery. Yoongi closes his eyes. “You don’t exist,” he tells the empty air, voice flat. “And you’re off-key.”
The ceiling light flickers twice in response.
As he pulls himself back to his feet, he realises three things simultaneously: a) his back hurts worse than it should, which means he's been overextending himself in the whole moving-and-fixing-up ordeal; b) the dripping noise has miraculously stopped; and c) the stairs are somehow creaking again.
Yoongi's not even in the same room as them, for fuck's sake!
Great, he has to attempt to figure that out now. Just what he needs. He puts his torch on the counter, heading out to the hallway.
The house seems to breathe with him as he moves, boards shifting, old nails sighing, wallpaper whispering loose in its seams. There’s a rhythm to it, almost musical, the same 4/4 pattern he's used to tapping against his thigh while composing.
Halfway up the staircase, he pauses. The air feels heavier here, dense with old wood and something faintly sweet, like dust and sugar. Someone’s perfume, maybe. When he steps again, the third stair from the top groans sharply, like protest.
“Shush, not now,” he tells it.
The sound stops instantly. He blinks down at his feet. “Right,” he mutters. “That’s not creepy at all.”
It takes him fifteen minutes of stepping on each stair individually to understand that the stairs do what they want. His behaviour has nothing to do with them. In fact, they may be fucking with him a little on purpose, if he's honest. Whatever, he has better things to do anyway—like figuring out where that weird humming sound is coming from.
On his way down, he notices something new: the faint shape of a footprint on the dusty landing beside his own. Barefoot. Small. Half-faded, as if it’s been there for years. He ignores it, because of course he does. He doesn't have the time and energy to relocate
Yoongi has never been religious, but Jesus Christ, this might be hell.
That same night, the pipes start humming. It’s quiet at first, like the kind of vibration you can convince yourself you’re imagining. Then it turns into an actual tune, one he almost recognizes from his unfinished track.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters, hitting the wall once with his fist. The pipes immediately change key, assuming his displeasure is at the type of sound, and not the fact that there is sound in the first place.
He's probably losing his mind alongside his lungs, he decides. They never told him this side-effect, but it feels like a reasonable enough explanation for whatever is going on with him.
“You’re not real,” he says to the wall firmly. “And you’re definitely tone-deaf.”
The humming grows louder, defiantly off-beat. Yoongi glares at the ceiling. “Fantastic. I’m being haunted by an optimist.”
He kills the studio lights and lets the dark expand. Somewhere near the back door, a faint clink, like a spoon stirring an empty mug, echoes once and fades.
The plan had been simple: move out to the countryside, away from the city’s noise, its people, its hospitals. Renovate this crooked house enough to keep it from collapsing, and spend whatever time’s left making music that probably won’t outlive him by much. It’s supposed to be peaceful here. Except peace probably doesn’t sound like this.
It doesn’t sound like footsteps pacing the hallway when he’s trying to sleep. It doesn’t sound like humming, cheerful, off-key humming, echoing through the pipes at three in the morning. It doesn’t sound like someone whistling while he paints over mold.
Yoongi tells himself it’s just the house settling. Or his imagination. Or the pain meds. But then, one morning, a paintbrush floats midair. Just hovers there, dripping. Yoongi stares at the paint splattering on the floor for a few minutes, unimpressed, before finally muttering, “Put that down.”
The brush clatters to the floor. Oh shit. Oh shit. He's not a believer in the paranormal either, but, “Oh my god, you can hear me?”
Naturally, there's no response. Yoongi closes his eyes.
“...Shit.”
He spends the rest of the day pretending nothing happened, which, in his defence, is something he’s very good at. Years of interviews, of rehearsed smiles and deflected questions, have made denial practically a survival instinct.
So he doesn’t look toward the corner where the paintbrush fell, and he doesn’t acknowledge the faint sounds that seem to follow him from room to room. When he catches a shadow that doesn’t belong to him flickering in the reflection of the microwave, he blinks and moves on.
By evening, the quiet has settled again, or maybe he’s just stopped noticing the noise. Either way, Yoongi decides it’s a good time to get some work done.
As a creative, he prefers to work during odd hours. If you ask him why, he'd say the night gives him the quiet he needs, it's less of a sensory nightmare, and he can work in peace. The real answer, though, gleams atop the shelf in front of his piano in the studio: the first GRAMMY he ever won was for a record he worked on almost exclusively between midnight and dawn.
That feeling he got, walking onto the stage as Best New Artist, and the first Korean to be on that stage as a recipient was…electric. And he's kept it bottled within him, as a reminder of what he's doing all this for.
Of course, the art in itself means a lot; it's why he gets out of bed in the morning after all, but this recognition means something too. It tells him he's seen, understood, valued—and what more could a person want? Well, maybe a better melody than the one he's currently strumming on his guitar…
Not that it's bad, nothing he touches ever is, it just lacks something…
Yoongi puts his guitar down, walking out to the patio. Perhaps this night breeze can give him ideas.
It's a cold October night, and there's no sound or light for miles. He’s a bit annoyed, hyper-aware of the silence…until he begins to hear a soft humming, scarily similar to the tune he was playing earlier. Well, not that scary, since it's his own brain coming up with this. It just sounds so real. He lets the sound drift, hang in the air, as he takes a quick break from his mind.
By morning, he’s convinced himself the whole thing was just the house settling, the way old houses like to groan and hum to remind you they’ve seen worse. He doesn’t think about it again until the next night, when his studio window slams shut on its own. Twice.
Alright.
He doesn’t flinch. Just stares at it for a long moment, exhales through his nose, and mutters, “Draft.”
It’s not convincing by any means, but it's not like there's anyone around to argue with him.
Eventually, he gets used to the sounds. There's a tap of footsteps on the second floor when he’s downstairs. Occasionally a creak in the floorboards near the hallway, like someone pacing. Sometimes, faint humming, always off-key, always familiar.
He stops checking the locks after the first week.
When the kettle turns itself on one afternoon, he pauses long enough to say, “That’s new,” before pouring himself a cup and going back to work. He doesn't have time for this.
The thing is, Yoongi’s not scared. Not really. He’s tired, sure. He’s lonely in that strange way you get when you’ve made peace with everything, from life to death. In fact, the haunting becomes routine. Persistent, irritating, oddly comforting once you stop fighting it.
If ghosts exist, he decides, at least his came housebroken.
Once, he finds toast perfectly browned waiting on a plate. He stares at it for a full minute before eating it. It tastes faintly sweet.
He's sure he needs to go consult someone about this, but it's not really serious enough for that yet, and they'll probably blame it on his sleep deprivation like they always do. Besides, he’s not hearing voices, not exactly, just…soft whispers against the edge of sleep, like thoughts that don’t belong to him.
It's a little inconvenient, but it's not a problem. Not yet, at least.
It's a few days since the toast incident when, while fixing a shelf, he feels the faintest pressure at his elbow, a touch that helps him steady the plank. He doesn’t look away from his hammer, doesn’t thank it. Simply nods, states, “I’m hallucinating,” under his breath, and reaches for a nail.
Days pass. Weeks, maybe. Time doesn’t seem to move normally out here. It folds, repeats, and loops around, but it doesn't feel quite moving.
When he composes, the strange energy seems to help. The notes come easier, melodies flow smoother. There’s a rhythm he can’t explain, as if someone’s humming along, quietly, keeping time with him. He never thanks it, never asks it to stop, just keeps writing.
One evening, during a storm, the power cuts out, and he lights a candle. The flame flickers wildly, stretching toward the far corner of the room where the shadows thicken, almost human-shaped.
Yoongi watches it for a long moment, waiting for it to move before he goes back to scribbling lyrics by hand. Because, well, if it does move, he doesn't really have a plan for that.
“Stress,” he tells the candle. “Just stress.”
By now, he’s started talking to himself more. Or to whoever, whatever, is there. Just little things, barely half-conversations, muttered under his breath.
“You’re just stress,” when a door creaks.
“I don’t believe in this crap,” when something moves in the corner of his eye.
“Go haunt someone with better health insurance,” when his mug disappears and reappears in the sink.
Sometimes, the house seems to answer back. Not with words, of course, but in gestures. Sometimes, it's a record player turning on mid-thought, a blanket tugged higher when he dozes off on the couch, or the kitchen lights flickering like laughter when he makes a terrible joke to himself about spoons.
It's weird, definitely. Yet, he ignores all of it. Or tries to.
The first real crack in his denial comes one night when he wakes up to music playing softly from the studio. It sounds like his own unfinished track looping back on itself, the mix he never saved.
He sits up, disoriented, and for a split second, he swears he sees someone sitting at the piano. Just a shape, perhaps shoulders? There's definitely a tilt of the head…but the light flickers just so, and it’s gone.
He rubs his eyes and says it again, flatly, to the empty room, “I don’t believe in this crap.” Then, quieter, to no one in particular, “...I really don’t.”
The silence that follows feels heavier than usual, almost expectant. He goes back to sleep eventually. He dreams of someone laughing, distant and familiar.
When he wakes, there’s a new melody scribbled on the page beside his bed. Yoongi doesn’t remember writing it. He doesn’t ask who did. He doesn’t ask anything at all. Instead, he reaches over to his notebook, idly scribbling until he sees a pen floating in the corner of his eye.
Alright, man.
He turns the page, grabbing the pen from the air, writing down a short, one-line note for himself:
Do not engage. Definitely, absolutely, under no circumstances, engage.
Whoever, or whatever, handed him the pen seems to swish around, as if acknowledging his statement.
When he sits down at the piano that night, and the same humming joins in, a little off-beat, a little too upbeat, actually, he doesn’t stop playing, doesn’t even glance toward the sound. He just mutters, almost absently, “You’re really starting to get on my nerves.”
And somewhere in the air, bright, young, impossibly alive, a lilting voice responds, “Finally.”
Well, shit.