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It’s no secret that Jeongguk hated his uncle’s mansion, so why would it be left for him in the will?
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Jeongguk can feel himself trembling from the moment he steps foot through the carved oak doors of the mansion. The interior is dark and old, sucking him in like a black hole with inescapable gravity. He can smell the polish lingering on every surface of wood in the house and it makes his head ache. He shuffles through the entrance, waiting for the house to turn on him like it always does.
As a child, Jeongguk would often stay at the house during summer when his parents didn’t have time off work to take care of him – much to Jeongguk’s dismay. He had complained to his parents and begged them not to send him there, but they didn’t see why he made such a fuss.
Almost every night Jeongguk spent there, the piano would play by itself.
Jeongguk would wake to haunting melodies echoing throughout the mansion at midnight. They always sounded sad and longing, like the way one would look at the moon and wish to walk foot on its luminous surface. Every time Jeongguk would approach the piano room, the songs would continue to play until the very moment he opened the door, letting an unfinished chord ring throughout the room.
It was terrifying, especially when the record player would spontaneously turn on sometimes after Jeongguk had opened the door. Once familiar tunes played unsettlingly slowly, set to play decayed melodies at 33 rpm. He was only a child, so of course he would run to his uncle and aunt’s bedroom in hysterics.
They didn’t believe him. No one ever did.
And now here he is, a decade and a half later, wandering through the same halls, awaiting the moment of abject terror to take hold of him as it always did when he was alone here.
The furniture is covered in white sheets, filling the house with its own caricature ghosts. It feels harrowingly empty this way. Jeongguk turns a few lights on as he trails his way to the kitchen to pick up the spare set of keys and envelope of paperwork that awaited him in the west wing. The floor is solid beneath him, but a single creaky floorboard is enough to make his heart jump. Goosebumps erupt across his skin and as he hurriedly shuffles down the corridor, checking behind him, the temperature drops.
He finally makes it to the kitchen and snatches up the keys and envelope that await him on the counter. He’s about to cross the threshold back into the hallway when a single chord rings out across the mansion.
The keys and envelope clatter to the floor and he freezes in his place. His breath becomes stuck in his throat and he swears he can feel a bead of sweat sliding down his temple. A wail threatens to rise in his throat. He should not have come here. He should have asked a friend to go for him instead.
Claire de Lune. Its captivating tune plays slowly but expertly from the end of the west wing, echoing through the empty rooms like a siren’s call. Jeongguk can’t decide between hightailing it out of there, or finally coming to face one of his greatest childhood fears.
The notes swell and fade as the melody approaches its middle point, where it ebbs and flows like a mountain stream. Jeongguk almost feels awestruck as the melody translates to a hazy sunrise over a perfectly still forest where streams of gold ribbon snake through the air in delicate paths. The sun glitters with wonder and butterflies kiss bare skin until the moon suddenly rises and douses the forest in darkness and moonlight.
He doesn’t realise he is walking to the piano room until he finds himself approaching the carved sliding door that the piano hides behind. His ambivalence leaves him nothing short of powdered fear in the hands of the universe.
He lifts a trembling hand to the knob and takes a deep breath before sliding the door open deathly slow.
The music stops as it always does, leaving a chord of an unfinished phrase to hang awkwardly in the air. It makes his ears ring, and he swallows the thick glob of saliva stuck in the back of his mouth as he peaks around the door frame, ready to run at the first sign of anything remotely paranormal.
The room is set up as it always is, the white sheets that cover every piece of furniture in the house have been cast aside here. Jeongguk takes a deep breath and steps across the threshold into the room. It’s only November, but the room feels as if it’s had a window cracked open all day. He looks to his left and right before tip toeing up to the piano, breathing uneasily.
He doesn’t want to fear that piano anymore. His palms are sweaty as he wipes them on his jeans and shakily sits himself down on the stool. The fallboard has already been laid upright, showing off the clean ebony and ivory keys. Part of Jeongguk wants to run out of the room and never return, but the other half – the more impulsive and, perhaps, poetic half – wants to stay.
Claire de Lune. He knows it the same way a broken guitarist knows Wonderwall and a shattered pianist knows River Flows in You. So, there is no trouble picking up from where the piano left off, however, he is stiff and unpractised. It picks up as many descending arpeggios that then introduces melodic chords that overlays them. It’s like bright starlight amongst streams of curling smoke. It slows into a gentle sonata in the moonlight before petering off into the slow sunrise of arpeggios. His playing is far from perfect, but he somehow sounds even better than he is performing.
Just when Jeongguk is about to let out a pent-up breath and finally relax into playing he notices something unequivocally terrifying.
Whenever he misses a note, the key presses down by itself. His left-hand shoots away as if it had just touched a hot pot and the keys press down where his hand should be. A small scream slips from his lips as he shoots up from the piano stool, knocking it back with a crash. He stumbles back until he falls on his butt with a thud and he scrambles even further back to put some distance between himself and that cursed piano.
His heart pounds in his chest as he opens and closes his mouth dumbly, fighting to get a word out.
“I know you’re there,” he stammers quickly. The room is silent and Jeongguk doesn’t exactly expect a reply. There must be a ghost haunting the piano, he’s sure of it. He tries to reign in his ragged breaths and straighten his mind – he’s trying to talk to a ghost.
“Do you not want me to play?” he asks nervously, terrified that the answer could somehow be yes.
Silence.
Jeongguk feels uneasy and stupid, he’s talking to himself. He shuffles his body around to get up off the cold floorboards. Maybe one last question would get him an answer.
“Do you want me to play with you?”
More silence.
Slowly but surely, a single key presses down on the piano and a quiet note rings out.
Yes.
Jeongguk stills completely, mind racing faster than he can comprehend his own thoughts. The piano – no, the ghost – was communicating with him. Next came the horrifying certainty that there is indeed a ghost in the room with him. Something – someone – he couldn’t perceive with any of his senses existed right in front of him with unknown intentions and indeterminate abilities.
Maybe the ghost needed Jeongguk to play something with them. He had heard about ghosts haunting places until their dying wish had been fulfilled. Perhaps this was one of these dying wishes. He clears his throat awkwardly.
“What do you want us to play?” he asks, slowly looking around the room for any sign of movement. There is no reply or indication from the ghost. So, he takes a deep breath and stands himself up, carefully stepping toward the piano stool that lies on its side, sheet music pouring out from the console beneath the seat.
He rights the stool and gathers the piles of sheet music together. Some of the pages have aged to the point where they have begun to yellow and soften. He lays out each piece neatly across the floor in rows, hoping that giving the ghost some options will get it to reply. There is an array of classical pieces to choose from and Jeongguk only hopes the ghost doesn’t fancy Rachmaninoff. He certainly isn’t in the mood to tear the skin between his fingers with impossible octave and a half stretches.
He eventually finishes laying out all the pieces across the floor and they almost tile the entire area of the room. He steps back and gestures to the collage of music in front of him with exasperation.
“Go on, pick one.”
Jeongguk isn’t sure what to expect in response to his efforts. The room is still, and he begins to doubt whether there is even a ghost in the first place. Though, it’s as if the ghost can feel his impatience as a window suddenly flies open and lets in a gust of air. Every sheet of paper suddenly flies up into the air to swirl around like autumn leaves, crinkling and wobbling as they eventually crash to the ground and slide along the polished floorboards.
He looks on in horror as his efforts lay scattered across the floor and continue to shuffle away with the wind. He feels nauseous at the possibility he had made the ghost angry; he has heard numerous supposedly true horror stories of people who were haunted by ghosts, especially by demonic spirits they made contact with through a Ouija board.
The sound of paper flapping in the wind catches his attention.
At the edge of the room, a single set of sheet music rests, a corner anchored under a music book. It’s sitting right where Jeongguk originally placed it, only, he does not remember leaving the music book there. He picks up the papers and feels chills run down his spine.
It translates to Love Dream. He has heard it before and can’t help but gulp at how difficult the piece would be to play without practise. He hasn’t sat down to learn a piece in a long time. Claire de Lune came from muscle memory; he could be eighty and still remember how to play it. What seems most daunting of all is how romantic the piece is. It isn’t even written as a duet.
Jeongguk clears his throat and shakes off his nerves before sitting down on the piano stool. He can’t feel the ghost beside him, so he isn’t quite sure what to do. He arranges the pages on the stand and wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, releasing a shaking breath.
“I’ve never played this one before,” he clarifies aloud, hoping the ghost won’t be angered by his inevitably poor playing and mistakes. “I’ll do the left hand?” he suggests. Though he finds bass clef a little harder to read, it’s the much simpler half of the piece.
He sucks a final gulp of air in before his finger comes down on the first note, E♭. At the second note, an A♭, the C two octaves above presses down by itself. He freezes awkwardly, surprised that this ghost will play with him, and at his pace. The right-hand part continues in artistically timed ascending and descending arpeggio runs. It’s easy to tell that this ghost was an incredibly experienced player.
Jeongguk continues with slow notes and chords and the ghost slows slightly as it approaches the part where Jeongguk is supposed to play, watching his every movement so they hit every chord in perfect synchrony. The arpeggios become minor as the piece progresses, but soon switch back to major as Jeongguk squints at the sheet music. Together, the piece does not flow due to Jeongguk’s unfamiliarity with it, but the ghost continues to play along with him patiently.
They pass through the first section of the piece, leaving a single long E hanging in the air. At the next section, Jeongguk is confronted with a quickly ascending and descending set of chromatic chords bunched closely together with the right-hand. He holds his breath as he hurriedly deciphers the notes. As he accidentally hits the wrong note, the ghost seems to make up for his inaccuracies with a quick correction.
Next comes the romantic theme, which is where the piece becomes more difficult. Jeongguk stumbles through it, aided by the ghost, ensuring that the vibrant melody barely falters. The music swells with colours and intensity as it progresses to a majestic melody. He struggles with the jumps and quick arpeggiated ascensions, timid playing vastly contrasted by the much bolder and assured playing of the ghost.
The piece slows again and runs into another chromatic descension as it progresses into another part as the ghost takes over. Jeongguk can feel sweat dripping down his brow and the hair by the top of his neck stick to his skin. It’s hard work and nerve-wracking trying not to make a mistake.
The initial theme of the song makes a return, only this time, the left-hand part is fuller and more delicate. Jeongguk needs to reach over where the ghost is playing to hit the chords in the higher octaves. There’s nothing in the way, but it feels somewhat intimate. The piece slows once again to enter a darker theme, perhaps the decline of love, maybe even loss, rings in the music.
It slows and enters the final stage, slowly reiterating the main theme and descending into a drawn out ending of final notes that cease to end, like everlasting love. They hit the final chord together and let it ring out into the room. Jeongguk can finally take his eyes away from the sheet music and sees a single hand gently pull back from the keys as the last note finishes.
The fingers are long with knobbly knuckles and blue veins that snake across the pale skin. Jeongguk inhales sharpy as he traces his eyes up the person’s arm and comes face to face with the young man sitting beside him. His stare is gentle, and his catlike eyes peak out from a long fringe of dark hair. The corner of his mouth twitches upward ever so slightly in a short quirk: a lazy smile.
Jeongguk can’t move. This man must be the ghost.
He flinches as the man carefully stands up from his end of the stool and walks with soundless footsteps to stand behind where Jeongguk sits frozen on the piano stool, looking up at him with wide eyes.
The man’s eyes close as he leans down and places a cold but gentle hand on Jeongguk’s neck. His lips press softly against the top of Jeongguk’s head and he slowly straightens up. The hand on the back of his neck pulls away and the man looks to the golden sunlight pouring through the window and fades away into nothing.