I take the stairs two at a time.
The flat is quiet when I get in. Seojun is still out. I drop my bag on the couch, my keys, my jacket, one shoe and then the other at the bedroom threshold and cross the room without turning the light on.
Second drawer. Under the utility receipts.
I sit on the floor with my back against the desk and open the notebook and read the list from the beginning because that's the rule.
Reasons I want to summon a ghost.
1. Because I need what he took with him.
2. Because the people who killed him are still alive.
3. Because I was the only one who understood what he was doing.
4. Because someone has to go where the living won't.
5. Because the Recorders lied about what's down there.
6. Because I made him a promise before he died and I intend to keep it.
7. Because I think his death was supposed to be mine.
8. Because someone has to understand what the Root is before it opens.
9. Because I don't want to be the only one who remembers him.
The tenth line is blank and I look at it for a moment with the pen in my hand and then I close the notebook and stand up.
The headlamp is on the hook by the wardrobe. I put it on, switch it to the amber setting, press my palm flat against the panel beside the wardrobe and the section of wall opens inward.
Everything on the shelf is where I left it. I check anyway because I don't trust preparation. I haven't verified and I've come too far to start now.
In the center of the room, on the low platform, Cha Junho looks like he's sleeping and I was not prepared for that when I started and I still haven't gotten used to it. He fell asleep in the school library once in second year and I remember being annoyed about it because he looked peaceful in a way that bothered me even before he decided I was worth making difficult.
I look at him for as long as I need to and open the notebook to a fresh page at the back.
The methodology is writing and speaking simultaneously with my left hand flat against the platform near his shoulder. I tested the sequence. I practiced reading aloud. I don't do things unpracticed when they matter.
Because I need what he took with him.
Written and spoken, hand against the wood, and then I move to the next one and the next because each reason is a door I have to decide to open and the only way through is through.
Because the people who killed him are still alive. Because I was the only one who understood what he was doing. Because someone has to go where the living won't.
My handwriting gets smaller around the fifth reason. I notice and don't fix it.
Because the Recorders lied about what's down there.
Because I made him a promise before he died and I intend to keep it.
That one I rewrote four times before I found a version I could say out loud. The one I kept is honest.
Because I think his death was supposed to be mine.
Because someone has to understand what the Root is before it opens. Because I don't want to be the only one who remembers him.
I look at the tenth line.
Nine completes the mechanism, I confirmed this, the tenth line was never about the ritual. It's the reason I keep the notebook under the utility receipts. The one I keep not writing. He was a bully — that's the accurate version, the one I'd give if someone asked — and he made three years of my life structurally difficult and I survived and I am in most respects fine, and I am also standing in a hidden room in my flat having spent seven months preparing this, which is maybe an argument against fine that I've chosen not to examine.
I cap the pen and say to the room, "You'd better be worth it."
The preservation breaks and it isn't dramatic, there's no sound or movement, just something that has been held in this room for months releasing all at once, and Cha Junho's ghost comes up out of his body like a second layer of himself until he's upright and present and the body on the platform is only a body now.
He looks at his hands, then the room, then me, and his face does nothing I recognize.
"Who are you," he says, not quite a question.
"Yeon Siah."
He looks at me the way you look at a name you've never heard before in your life.
"Where am I?"
I glance at the blank tenth line still open in my hand and close the notebook. "That's a longer conversation."
He looks around for somewhere to sit, finds nothing, and looks back at me with that expression — that specific look of mild inconvenienced assessment I spent three years on the receiving end of — and my chest does the thing I don't have a name for and haven't tried to name.
He doesn't know me at all and he's standing right in front of me.