never have that recipe again | Glowfic Constellation

nightmare_material

The cultural gulf between the East and the West is very wide. Even though Jaeha—no, Jake, he needs to get used to calling himself that in his own head—even though Jake had a lot more contact with the West than most of his classmates, he still did not actually expect that kids daring each other to go visit haunted houses after dark was, like, a thing. It sounded too much like made-up ragebait for teen flicks, you know? Like, who would do that? It's so—undignified.

But here he is, undignifiedly recording himself on his phone to prove that he did, in fact, come to the haunted house. He's still not steady on his social feet, and it was not hard to see that actually most of the other kids at his new school were in actual fact terrified of the haunted house and even the ones who claimed they'd come didn't, actually. So here's a way for him to acquire some cred and get taken more seriously despite being foreign.

He's also got to act for the camera, though, and he knows exactly how to act.

"And here we have the so-called 'haunted house'," he says in lightly- but noticeably-accented English. "So terrifying, I'm shaking in my designer shoes," he says dryly, pointing his camera at his shoes that are just regular Nike sneakers and not designer at all. Camera back to his face, an artful eyeroll and a smirk. "Now why don't I enter and find the ghosts? Sounds like a wonderful opportunity to me. I'll make sure to draw a lot of attention to myself so we don't have to waste any time looking for each other, why don't I?"

(There could be living people here, who could be a lot more dangerous than ghosts, and that is where his nervousness lies. But he's got a butterfly knife he knows how to use and self-defence training so unless someone uses a gun on him he can hold his own.)

(He hopes no one has a gun. That'd be a really stupid way to die, and Westerners are crazy about guns.)

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and-I-will-lose-it

"Why are they called Alexas?? And no, I don't think they would be able to hear me. No one but you can."

nightmare_material

"Dunno, that's just what the company that made them called them. You can pick a different name for them, I'm pretty sure, Alexa's just the default. iPhones and iPads have Siri instead, like, 'Siri what's the time?'"

"The time is six fifty-three PM," says Jake's phone.

and-I-will-lose-it

"...Woah. —I, uh, this is all extremely cool, but I've spent the last almost-three decades in a room with electronics I couldn't use, and I might be... a little terrified, that something horrible might happen to you, and then I would be right back where I've been. So mostly I'm thinking of things that—will keep, even if..."

nightmare_material

"I guess if we're both ghosts it'll be a problem. Especially if I'm stuck wherever I died, which it looks like you are. But, hey, you figured out how to become visible to me and you said you used a 'spell' for that? Surely there must be spells that would let you just be more—solid."

and-I-will-lose-it

"Kind of! A huge portion of my list is going to be spell ingredients, yeah."

nightmare_material

"—you need ingredients for spells? If they're weird it might take more than an hour for them to arrive."

and-I-will-lose-it

"Yeah, for most of them. I haven't been able to do anything. It sucks."

nightmare_material

"Alright. Well," and he makes a new shopping list "for later". He adds Alexas to that list because why not.

Then back to the first shopping list. "Anything else for an hour from now?"

and-I-will-lose-it

"As many batteries as you can. Is there a way to run electronics that don't rely on batteries or the power grid? White chalk. CDs from since I died, or if there's a new format that runs on batteries that's fine too; is there? What do phones run on?"

nightmare_material

"Phones have batteries but they're built-in and you need to plug them into things to recharge them. There's power banks, basically external batteries that make phones last much longer before needing to be recharged. I don't think there's anything that doesn't rely on batteries or the power grid, and the next step from CDs is, like, phones and computers. ...oh I guess MP3 players were a thing for a while, but you need to connect them to a computer to download the songs into them. You can download songs from a CD into an MP3 player though. I think. Usually. There might be, like, copyright stuff in CDs that makes that hard? I dunno no one uses CDs anymore." He's adding stuff to the list, though.

and-I-will-lose-it

"The thing I really want is 'a way to listen to music that lasts'; you might have a better idea than me of how to accomplish that."

nightmare_material

"You can't wear headphones and earphones, right? So... probably a good sound system and maybe an MP3 player would be a pretty good idea? Some of those do run on batteries and since all they do is music the battery can last days, maybe weeks. —wait, you'd need power for a good sound system. Uhh, there are probably battery-powered systems... Park Jipyeong-shi can figure that out for me."

and-I-will-lose-it

"I don't think I can, no. Do we think I can operate those, even if we can power them?"

nightmare_material

"If you can hold a pen sometimes you can probably use them sometimes yeah, but also we can just leave stuff on repeat for you so you're still able to listen even without being able to touch it. —oh I bet you'd love Spotify's Discover, although I guess if you can't operate anything it's much harder to deal with it when it thinks a song is for you and it really really isn't."

and-I-will-lose-it

"I could just go outside for a while, probably. —Do you want to fly? I can take you around outside if you want, though—I should stay low, just in case it takes way more energy than I think it will."

nightmare_material

"—wait of course you can fly we were floating—let me send this text first—" Typety type, mostly in Korean, send. "Alright hell yeah."

and-I-will-lose-it

"Yeah okay! Do you want to, should I start now or do you want to see what the house really looks like and make your own way outside? —You should also get a lantern or something tonight in case I run out of energy and can't do the lights for you anymore."

nightmare_material

"Sure, let me see it. My phone can do a flashlight," he says, demonstrating. "Didn't you see it the other day?" You know, the day he killed Jake.

and-I-will-lose-it

"It seems kinda... harsh? I mean to like, hang out with. I really don't know how much juice I have for you right now; I sent you home pretty much as soon as I started to feel even a little bit low. So I figure, just, as long as you're buying things anyway—obviously you don't have to. My night vision's a lot better than when I was alive; it's not for my benefit."

nightmare_material

"Fair enough, I'll get some lights." Text text.

and-I-will-lose-it

Once he looks done with that Jeremy—

Ghost House

melting-in-the-dark

—turns the lights out.

The room looks mostly the same: things are dustier, a bit more worn. Colder.

nightmare_material

"This isn't so different. —it's just your room, isn't it, the rest of the house is falling apart," he guesses.

and-I-will-lose-it