The decision to move upstairs was not sudden.
It crept into me the way mold creeps through damp walls slow, quiet, irreversible.
The house had failed.
Night after night, it tried to break Sunhee, and night after night she remained untouched. Worse she softened the air. The whispers lost their sharpness. The shadows hesitated before moving. The house was becoming cautious, like a predator that had tasted something poisonous.
I couldn't allow that.
If Ravenhill House lost its hunger, then everything I had built everything I had become would collapse.
So I moved into the flat above hers.
The ceiling of her room became my floor. I could hear her breathing through the boards at night, slow and even, as if she trusted the dark. That trust unsettled me more than fear ever had.
The house did not welcome my decision.
The first night I slept upstairs, the walls creaked in warning. The pipes screamed until rust-colored water spilled from the taps. The mirror in the bedroom showed me standing behind myself, mouth stretched into a grin I wasn't making.
She is not yours, the house whispered.
I ignored it.
If the ghosts couldn't kill her, then I would.
THE FIRST ATTEMPT
I loosened the stair railing outside her door.
Just enough.
It had worked before. Panic always makes people grab too hard, lean too far. A clean fall. A convincing accident.
I stood at the top of the stairs the next morning, coffee cooling in my hands, watching her step out of her room.
She hummed.
That sound crawled under my skin.
Her foot slipped exactly where it should have.
The railing gave way.
Sunhee fell
And stopped.
The board beneath her snapped upward, catching her ankle like a hand. She gasped but didn't scream. I watched in disbelief as she steadied herself, heart racing for the first time but still alive.
Behind me, the house groaned in frustration.
I felt it then.
Not satisfaction.
Disappointment.
THE SECOND ATTEMPT
Gas was easier.
I sabotaged the kitchen line that night, just a slow leak. Invisible. Deadly. I left her cooking dinner alone, every sense sharp with anticipation.
I waited upstairs.
Minutes passed.
Then an hour.
Instead of coughing or collapsing, she opened a window.
I froze.
"How did you" I whispered to the empty room.
She lit a candle and frowned. "That smell… it feels wrong."
The flame bent away from her.
The gas dissipated.
The house screamed inside the walls, loud enough to make me clamp my hands over my ears.
It was protecting her now.
Not out of loyalty.
Out of fear.
THE KNIFE
I didn't plan the knife.
That was impulse.
That was desperation.
One night, during a blackout, I stood behind her in the hallway. The only light came from the emergency bulb, painting her shadow long and fragile on the wall.
My hand trembled as I raised the knife.
I imagined blood on the floor. Silence. Relief.
She turned.
Not suddenly.
Not startled.
She looked straight at me, eyes wide not with fear, but concern.
"Junghoon," she said softly. "You look… sick."
My grip loosened.
The knife clattered to the floor.
My knees nearly followed.
She stepped closer.
That was when the house snapped.
The walls slammed inward. Shadows lunged from corners, shrieking. A spirit with no face clawed at my back, furious that I had hesitated.
Sunhee grabbed my wrist.
"Stop," she whispered not to me.
To the house.
The shadows recoiled.
The spirit vanished.
I stared at her, breath ragged.
The house was shaking.
And it wasn't from hunger.
It was from jealousy.
THE BEGINNING OF RUIN
After that night, the house stopped listening to me.
Doors locked when I needed them open. Mirrors showed my mother staring at me in disappointment. The whispers changed tone no longer conspiratorial, but accusatory.
You are weak.
You hesitate.
She is undoing you.
And they were right.
I began to notice small things.
The way Sunhee made space quieter just by entering it.
The way she spoke to the walls like they could hear kindness.
The way my heart reacted to her voice before my mind could stop it.
This wasn't love.
I didn't believe in love.
This was something worse.
This was attachment
And attachment was dangerous.
Because if I couldn't kill her
And the house couldn't touch her
Then she wasn't my enemy.
She was my ending.
That night, lying awake above her room, listening to her breathe through the floorboards, I realized something terrifying.
I no longer wanted her dead.
I wanted her to stay.
And Ravenhill House had never forgiven betrayal.