Haunted! [Job/Ene]

She stared back at the house, two shiny eyes reflecting against the glass that made the windows. A house, painted peach over each corner and roofed with simple emerald green, sat a few meters from where Wing stood from across the road. Even from the slightest distance, she felt the thick blanket of an unnatural lack of human activity coating the building from roof to windowsill, from the balcony to the front steps. Wing squashed her hands together, crumpling a note her client had given her a few minutes before. Sre didn't have the initiative, or reason thereof, to act as a logical chaperone. Thought the man wouldn't admit it, Wing had the impression that he shared a common fear of hauntings like most people would, at least, that's what she saw in his job description. Wing forced an enthusiastic smile on her face, walking over to the twisty silver gates. Wing couldn't laugh at Sre, since first and for most his fear wasn't an action of abnormality. Though she wished she had an idea of what it was like to be haunted, like what she'd often read from her father's stack of paranormal studies. She wasn't scarred, nor was she courageous against something like this.

Wing was just stumbling from her curiosity syndrome, down a rabbit hole, which in her case, stood over a patch of dead grass, surrounded by miles of trees, and was on the verge of crumbling. "If this was the place the stories have been claiming cursed..." She pushed the gates open, and they swung with a gentle push. The sounds of metal colliding against each other swirled against the air, and for some odd, inane reason, Wing shivered.

"-Then it's a place worth the one-time experience." She said, firm as she pursued the small brick path that lead to the house. Wing felt a swell of pride at the thought of her heart not missing a beat, coordinating with the rhythm of her steps.

Deep within the tendrils of her subconsciousness though, a scarred little voice pleaded for Sre, or another harmless source of life, to be with her at that moment. On impulse, Wing angled her neck a bit, eyes on the gates as she hesitated on pulling a door knob. Then she smiled, slightly, letting a world of dust open to her presence with a single, swift turn and click.

Dust swirled around like a second wind, clinging tightly against the peeling paint of the walls and the creaking floor boards, flying past her senses and subtly tickling the corners of her nose as the door flung to the side in an unpleasant crackle. She coughed, liberally, without falter at the thickness of the air. Sre wasn't very enthusiastic on description, and perhaps this was the reason for most of his incoherent mumblings when Wing took a chance to be nosy on the subject of the house's condition. She had to admit that this wasn't much to actually dwell on, but he could've at least told her to bring a napkin, hanky...or a gas mask -anything under the sun to help her breath through the heavy smell of dust and slow growing molds.

Haunted? A week certainly proved its worth to create that in every aspect perfect. Wing didn't know if she should be more or less happy about this, though. And it was for that reason why the doorway was left wide open. 'For the air.' she'd tell herself, but for honest means, and for a better translation of the words underneath her self-built walls, 'For an exit.' was more reasonable in regard.

And perhaps her talent to be oblivious by will was actually useful at that time, if it weren't, her own fear would have eaten her whole by now. It wasn't a very pleasant thought. Wing felt the pressed edges of the crumpled note against her palm, poking soft tingles of reminder on its existence. She was half-way up the stairs, empty echoes and eerily vacant spaces trailing behind each step.
It occurred to her that Sre hadn't mentioned anything else in detail aside from the distinct phenomena he'd experienced not very recently.

Then again, Sre wasn't much of a conversation to begin with.

Fidgety, a perfect independent adjective that described the mess that she was right now. She didn't feel so intimidated by the people she chose to involve herself with, much less everything that she decided to corner herself in. Her client had been fated to be the head of a restaurant chain that deemed itself highly recognized all over Fiore, and it somehow bothered her to be in sharing the same table with Sre, regardless of his less classy profile.

Apartment, it said. How in the world would something so expensive and obviously preserved for only the best of people with the best money..be plainly regarded as an apartment? Wing's head dipped low, feeling so vulnerable for prejudice and rich-men scorn. However raised to the voice of her client, her vision was still glued to the ground.

"I'll need to warn you of a few things..." His voice was strained, almost tired. Wing could see the faintest outlines of dark circles under his eyes against the blare of his sun-colored hair flowing down his face, bluntly telling of a story of insomnia -restless days counting on his haunted dreams. She could honestly hold some sympathy, but something was telling her to just clip her mouth shut tight.

"It's been a long week. I've already ordered a few house-takers to manage it but they all seemingly quit even before they had a full day. It's quite tiring seeing one resignation letter after another. And don't get me started on how many paranormalists came and went in a furry of screams." Sre sank into his chair, having gained no thought of digging into the meal he shared with Wing as it grew cold over each flying second. "There's something in there, definitely, so I want you to be very cautious." From the depths of his seat he produces a small note, elegantly written letters making home on the bleach white paper. Sre flicked a wrist, beckoning a man with a stereotypical 'Yes master' presence to approach the table. Her client moves to hand him the piece of parchment, listlessly tossing his head to the side to meet the tips of his knuckles in a tired attempt to feel even the least bit of comfort. The butler regards the act in carefully practiced eloquence, and places it at the base of Wing's barely touched plate of delights.

"Madam." He spoke, bowing with a step. "Thank you." she had told him, although having no intent to stare back at the flickering green irises that showed no emotion. "You're very welcome."

The butler retreats to the stillness of the corners, a swish of black fleetingly there before disappearing to the shadows of the eerie stretch of halls. Wing found pity, slightly, thinking how you'd serve your life to a person, treated nothing more as an object of submitting to the demands of your master without so much of a spark of gratitude. Though she knew there wasn't any reason to question Sre's actions, or his servant's will. Merely because it was considered entirely reflex.

Wing stood up from her chair at the feeling of the paper safely tucked into her pockets. "It was a pleasure to have been served by you, Sir."

Sre's shadowy purple eyes chill her to the bone as they carefully processed her bow. She disregards the fatigue that drips from his farewells as Wing exits the hotel, and promptly receives the gratitude he opted, somehow, to show her at his "Good luck dearest, you have my blessing". Perhaps Sre wasn't a person familiar with hiding his own stress over his own predicaments, Wing could see it in the way he slouches his shoulders over the chair and how his eyes looked about, so forlorn. The wobble in his hands and the weight of his sighs only confirmed her theories.

She was escorted back towards the front door of the lavish building that dares call itself a harmless apartment by the same limb-tucked servant she had met a few talks back, amongst a series of whispers from her client's mouths to which she didn't comprehend. At the door, he placed a hand over the sharp of her shoulder, and carefully dictated a word of advice, which he himself had deemed potentially useful.

"When you reach the uppermost floor, the attic, Please do carefully examine the closet painted white." He gave her a smile, an ever-constant curl of lips that Wing noticed in amazement. He motions a bow before gently cracking the door for her, "Fare trip, Madam."

"Thank you."

The words are familiar to her tongue, a flavor Wing came to know all her life. Yet at that time it started to taste dreadfully bland, oddly enough. She thinks it was from how many proper 'thank you's passed over her lips -an irrational quantity for just one day to her client and his range of servants who took the liberty of escorting her in and out -something so polite that it grew sickening from the foreign feelings. For once she believed that the day was too courteous for her liking, and promptly told herself she was being selfish, particularly for an atmosphere of friendly personalities.

"Lori, kiddo, silence isn't bad and all, but this is just wrong. C'mon, a topic!"

It was her second job, she knew that much. But somehow Wing wanted something closely related to her experience of her first, even if the concept of an ever shifting world and ever shifting days and that people weren't always the same, Wing wanted to feel something so similar.

She notices she's already half-way through the town, the houses disappearing at the ends of the road opening up to a lush green forest. Oh well, perhaps good understanding was uncalled for as of today.

There were plenty of people, plenty of time, plenty of places to feel the essence of a good hello from a person -like what all of the logic-driven statements her mind decided to process, Wing takes to this like a duck to water (oh how cliche).

"...Shame it wasn't today, though." She mumbles, somewhat sadly.

Their exchange was nothing but direct, all but notes of voices and footsteps from an unknown entity. If there was a chance for her to openly speak, Sre didn't even bother to give an audible response. It was oddly expected on Wing's part, however. She didn't really mind.

Everything factors up to a request being followed by the client and job-taker, and she was purely fallowing an order given by the castle. More or less it had to be considered his will to keep it frank, and Wing had no ability to oppose that.

She takes the job, she fallows it, accomplish and return, get rewarded and set home, rinse, lather, repeat. In the grand scheme of things, this was (one of many) process more than an event. If there was any room to do anything about it, it was solely for accepting it as a part of life itself.

"That aside,"

The sight of a green roof with a fairly large chimney pokes out from behind the trees, and Wing pulls the faintest of smiles.

"I need to get going."



Her feet clatter against the 30th step, ascending to the highest floor. The silence was definitely something to be disturbed by -nothing was heard, a wash of timelessness settling on the vases and tables, the swirls of a frame and the material of the carpet. And sitting squashed between two tables carrying wilted flowers in glass vases was a single grey door.

Pretty extravagant for an entrance to the attic.

"A white closet, huh?"

She tugged at the door knob, clicking it open, and the scope of things blinded her slightly. Sre certainly had a knack for keeping his things at a highly polished state of 'elegance'. "This isn't an attic.." Wing pressed her hands to edges of her waist, a laugh threatening to leave her lips, "It's a whole other bedroom!"

It's true, though. One could deduce 'bedroom' quality from a centered plush carpet, a boudoir to the edge of the grand queen-sized bed, two closets, four scenery paintings and a fire place. The dust was the only thing that felt priceless, for all the other things seemed to have cost...maybe it wasn't something she needed to comprehend. Wing wouldn't dare ask the price for Sre's fortunes, much less guess.

Besides, things like that were considered trivial. She was hunting a ghost, for crying out loud. It didn't matter if she was constantly surrounded by things double the amount she can earn on a healthy job routine over the course of a month. It only subtly affected the setting, and the real object of interest never changed -an unwanted visitor taking refuge in a well-kept attic.

Speaking of ghost...

"Hhhhhheeeelllllpppppp meeeeeee.....!"

"WHA-?!"