[October 4, 2042]

Isaac Frost was not a happy-looking man. His dark curly hair fell gloomily over his forehead in a way that suggested he didn’t take great care in either washing or brushing it. His face, still technically that of a relatively young man yet to reach middle age, was pale and lined, suggesting an inner anxiety or distress. His bright blue eyes ought to have been lively and inquisitive due to the unusual vividness of their color, but they lacked a certain luster to properly animate them. For whatever reason, he wasn’t wearing his rounded glasses today, which made this effect much more noticeable.

Despite this, Isaac Frost held himself with a certain dignity that ensured those in his company weren’t impeded by his melancholy. It was present in the stitches of his face and the movements of his body, but never as an energy that was projected outwards. It was for this reason that Cal always felt comfortable in his presence, and why when he emerged into the entry hall of Otter Manor to see Isaac sitting in one of the leather chairs, he didn’t feel the apprehension that would typically be present when in the company of an older adult.

Cal took a chair across from Isaac, and the man fixed a comforting gaze on him.

“No need for tenseness, this isn’t really a work-related visit,” Isaac said in his soft voice, “and regardless, I’ll be out of your hair soon. There are some things I need to take care of back at home.”

Cal nodded in acknowledgment.

“I just thought I’d exercise my duty of care,” said Isaac, brushing a black curl of hair away from his eyes, “so let me ask you Cal — you’re about a month into your tenure as caretaker of Otter Manor — how do you feel? How is my father’s old house treating you?”

Isaac took a second to look nostalgically around him at the furnishing of the room: at the wooden pillars, the carpets, and the staircase.

“It’s been treating me well, sir.”

“Before I opened it up to tenants, I had a bunch of repairs done,” Isaac traced the armrest of his leather chair with a finger, “fixing holes in the attic, trimming the grass, replacing some windows, that sort of thing. It had been more or less unoccupied for the last quarter-century, as you know, so obviously some things had to be done to make it comfortable. However, I didn’t want to change too much about my father's home — that sense of antique sincerity that he so admired.”

Isaac’s eyes twinkled with a little levity, a sort of fond recollection of a certain memory. “Though I’m afraid that means you don’t have so many amenities here. I understand most modern student accommodations have things like robot cleaners and automatic lighting and screen projections on various surfaces. It hasn’t been too much of a hassle, has it?”

“Not at all,” said Cal with sincerity, “to be honest, I didn’t really have access to a lot of those kinds of amenities growing up, so living somewhere like Otter Manor suits me fine. Oh, and the tenants here seem to feel the same way. I don’t think many of them had very typical upbringings.”

“Ah,” Isaac said, in a way that suggested the conversation had reached a point he had originally aimed to address, “I meant to ask about that, actually. The way things have shaken out, you’re the only boy currently living here with four girls. Has… that been fine for you? There is no discomfort or tension? It must be awkward, sometimes.”

Cal shrugged. “It hasn’t been a concern, sir. In fact, I think the atmosphere has only gotten more amenable over the last month. It’s been an adjustment, but I don’t think there’s any reason for you to be worried.”

“I’m glad,” Isaac murmured, leaning back in his chair, “when I first had this idea to actually occupy this place, I had a fear that it would somehow go terribly wrong. I suppose I’m still caught up in myself, after all this time. My father would be glad to hear that, Cal. All he ever wanted was for young people to live happy and long lives.”

Cal wasn’t sure how to respond. “I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

“What?” Isaac blinked, his perpetually melancholic expression replaced for a moment by surprise. “Oh, I must have given you the wrong impression. Thank you for your empathy, but it’s all ancient history. My father passed away the same year my family stopped living in this house, twenty-five years ago.”

Cal looked at Isaac, taking note of the man’s age. He wasn’t an extremely young man, but twenty-five years ago he would have been barely a teenager — surely — unless he was older than he looked. “I’m sorry to hear that. I-”

Cal paused, debating internally for a second whether this was information he wanted to disclose. “-I lost my father when I was very young, so I know how difficult that must have been.”

Isaac’s eyes filled with compassion. “You’re still very young. I’m sorry that happened to you. Were you raised by your mother?”

“No, she died too.”

There was a pause before Cal realized the effects of his words. “Oh, but it’s okay!” He said, trying to soften the blow. “I got adopted, and some other stuff happened, but it’s okay now. I’m close with my adoptive older sister. In fact, she drove me here my first day — she saw me off, so to speak.”

“You’ve had a difficult time. It’s brave of you to speak of it.”

Cal nodded, unable to meet Isaac’s eyes. He felt very self-conscious and was desperate to change the subject.

Isaac seemed to pick up on his young companion’s reticence and quickly turned the conversation back to himself. “You were perceptive to pick up on my age at the time of my father’s passing. I was very young, as was he — but it all happened so quickly. You see, I had an older-”

He paused here for some reason, as if he had forgotten his own story. Then he began again. “I had an older sibling, and they were… very sick. They had always been very sick, in truth. When they passed, my father… couldn’t handle it. The few months before my sibling's passing were stressful and difficult. He would cry all the time, day in and day out, practically without pause. My father was a very sweet man, Cal, and he felt things very strongly. Losing a child was the last straw after many weeks of grief and emotional turmoil.”

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Isaac closed his eyes for a moment. “He died a month after the funeral. Stress-related heart attack. And that was it.”

Cal’s mouth was dry. He didn’t know what to say in response to all this. Furthermore, the details of Isaac’s story had finally clicked together some puzzle pieces in his head — an obvious connection that he ought to have put together weeks ago, and the realization was making his mind race.

Isaac shook his head and rose to his feet. “I apologize, I didn’t come here to tell some old sad stories. I’m glad you're settling in well here, Cal. I hope this can be a place where you can live without anxiety or discontent. I could hope for nothing more. That knowledge would help me make peace with this old house.”

He looked around again at the room. “I would like this place to be one of happiness, unlike what it has been for me.”

Isaac nodded in the direction of Cal and extended a pale hand. For a moment, Cal couldn’t react because of the swimming of his head, but he eventually got to his feet and shook the man’s hand. Isaac then replaced the winter coat he had hung on the stand by the front door, carefully wrapped his scarf around his neck, and nodded in Cal’s direction.

“Have a good evening, Cal,” Isaac said in a slightly hoarse voice.

“...You too, sir.”

The door opened. The sliver of night sky Ca could see was full of white stars, like a field of wide-open eyeballs peering through a black curtain.

The door closed. Cal was alone in the entry hall.

A few minutes later, Cal still hadn’t left the room. He had sat back down in one of the leather chairs — one by the window. The table next to him had a chess set placed on it, the one he had played with Aina.

He felt tired.

“You’re still here?” said a voice from directly above Cal.

Cal looked up to see a freckled face peering out from the ceiling. The blue eyes glittered.

“There you are,” Cal said, turning his head to look out the window at the quiet night, “you’ve been hiding all day.”

“No, I haven’t!” Mel said, affronted. She glided down from the ceiling and nestled in the air next to Cal, the ends of her white sundress moving around her legs as if pushed by an invisible wind.

“You have,” Cal insisted, “ever since Isaac texted me this morning. You barely left our room. You were quiet too, which tipped me off that something was probably wrong.”

“I can be quiet,” Mel replied. Despite the ironically combative nature of her words, her voice was a little hesitant, as if she already knew what Cal was driving at.

Cal sighed, still staring out the window.

“Sorry,” he said finally.

Mel blinked, her eyes wide. “Why?”

“I should have been nicer to you, I guess.”

She drifted closer to him, positioning herself between Cal and the window. The ghost was putting her body through the glass so that the back end of her body was actually outside the house. Cal, who had been staring at the window, now had no choice but to look at Mel’s face.

Mel leaned her head closer to Cal, as if she intended to press her forehead against his own. “Did something happen?” she said gently.

“You told me, you told me the first day that we met where you died,” Cal said, still not quite meeting Mel’s eyes. “I suppose I didn’t take you very seriously, or maybe I thought you were lying for the sake of presentation.”

Finally, he raised his dark eyes to look into hers.

“This house was your father’s, wasn’t it?” He said, almost in an ashamed way. “You died here. Isaac’s your-”

“My little brother, yeah.” Mel tenderly took his hand. Cal flinched at the contact: the unexpected warmth and solidity of her body. “You figured it out, finally. You’re pretty smart, but I guess not that smart.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Cal said with an expel of air halfway between humor in response to Mel’s words and frustration with himself. “That’s why you were keeping to yourself. You didn’t want him to see you.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to him,” Mel replied, tracing the indentations of Cal’s palm with a finger, “he deserves… he deserves the chance to move on, after all these years.”

She laughed humorlessly. “It was quite a surprise, when I… woke up for the first time, to see him all grown up, fixing up the place, greeting Ellie and Ram when they moved into the house — our house. He was such a little kid, and quiet even back then. Now he’s tall and fully grown, unlike me.”

Mel anxiously patted the top of her own head, brushing down the short dark hairs. “We were born eight years apart, you know. He was the baby of the family. So, I always wanted to be a good example for him, someone he could look up to. I wanted to be cool and pretty and good at everything.” The remnants of her smile faded. “I’m glad he’s okay — that he’s alright. Mom is still alive, she can take care of him. He doesn’t have a need for old ghosts… not that he would even recognize…”

She broke off, seemingly to suddenly become cognizant of the way she was holding Cal’s hand. She released and timely hid her hands behind her back, but didn't move from his side.

“Isaac said you were sick…” Cal breathed.

Mel lowered her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. About how I was when I was alive. From before I met you.”

“Why not?” asked Cal.

She shrugged, looking at the floor. “I don’t know. It feels strange, almost inappropriate. I don’t… want you to think about me that way.” She paused. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you. And you can tell me all about yourself, too. But not yet.”

Cal bit his lip and nodded. “Okay… if you won’t think of me any differently, either.”

“It’s a promise.” Mel poked Cal’s cheek with a soft finger, which made him refocus his gaze on her. “For now, just treat like you always have: as your adorable and elegant ghost roommate.”

A smile came to Cal’s lips: a genuine one. “That's quite a generous self-assessment.”

“Hush,” she poked his cheek again. “You’re such a jerk. Come on, let’s go upstairs. We can watch a movie later — you still haven’t watched a proper ghost movie.”

Cal shook his head, but let himself be led to his feet and towards the staircase. “Don’t we need to finish that killer goblin movie franchise first? We’re on the fifth one.”

“Shoot, you’re right. We also need Ellie with us to finish those, she really got invested in the story.”

They paused at the foot of the staircase.

“It’s scary, revealing more about yourself,” Mel said. “Remember when I told you that I wanted to go outside? That was so frightening. My heart was beating out of my chest, however that works. I felt so anxious it was like I was going to be sick.”

Cal nodded. “I know. I get scared too — about those kinds of things.”

“Liar, you’re not scared of anything. You’re like an automaton. Nothing phases you.”

“If… only that were true.”

Mel twirled her body in front of him, putting herself between Cal and the staircase. She wasn’t floating, instead, her bare feet danced over the carpet, walking upon it like she was a normal girl. She smiled.

“I’m glad it was you who saw me first,” she said.

Cal tilted his head. “What?”

“Nothing.” Mel skipped up the first few steps and turned back to face him. “I’ll tell you about it some other time.”