Chapter Text
You were a fairly ordinary person. Very ordinary, in fact.
You were born into a traditional family. You have a younger brother and a sister who somehow manage to be equally irritating and lovable. Your mother is the kind of person you can always talk to, while your father insists on making terrible jokes as if he's a stand-up comedian. Of course, your family has its problems. You argue, hold grudges, make up. You're not the picture-perfect family from a TV commercial—just a family. Yours.
You had a romance back in middle school that, at the time, felt like the end of the world. You got over the breakup, just like everyone eventually does. You had your first kiss in the back row of a movie theater, during one of those ridiculously cliché moments that, with time, become the kind of memory you're almost glad to cringe at.
You went to a One Direction concert with your best friends and spent most of the night completely mesmerized by Zayn Malik. You landed your first job at McDonald's, and at some point, an absolutely unhinged customer threw a cup of Coca-Cola at you because she didn't like the way her fries had been served.
And now, college.
A life made up of countless little moments that, together, formed a perfectly ordinary existence.
Ordinary.
Very different from the one sitting across from you.
Dressed in a dark, finely tailored suit without a single crease out of place, he held a delicate porcelain teacup between his long fingers, tilting it toward the place where, on any ordinary person, a mouth would have been. Or at least, that's what it seemed like. There was no way to be certain. There were no lips, no teeth, no tongue. No eyes, no nose, nor any feature that could justify calling it a face.
And yet the tea disappeared from the cup into... somewhere.
You remained seated on the opposite side of the table, sunk into an absurdly comfortable armchair for someone who felt so uncomfortable. The office exuded refinement like the rest of the mansion, with antique furniture, dark wood, carefully arranged porcelain, and the gentle scent of freshly steeped tea leaves. All you had to do was ignore the minor detail that an abomination was presiding over the conversation for everything to seem perfectly reasonable.
"So... about the rental contract."
The ease with which he discussed the matter was the most unsettling part of all. To him, talking about the rent, explaining the house rules, and offering a stranger a cup of tea all seemed like perfectly ordinary activities. The fact that he was something beyond comprehension didn't even seem worth mentioning.
You, on the other hand, were completely frozen.
You might have even pissed yourself. It was hard to tell. Your soul had abandoned your body the moment the mansion doors opened and that supernatural creature appeared before you. Ever since, all that remained was an empty shell mechanically nodding along while trying to come to terms with the fact that the owner of the house was a tall, elegant, and utterly terrifying entity.
You needed a place to live. And you needed one fast.
The news that you had been accepted into college arrived hand in hand with another inevitable change: it was time to leave your parents' house. The idea possessed the seductive, captivating glow of everything that had yet to happen. A future that made you long for it. You would move to another city, begin a new routine, and, for the first time, have a life entirely your own.
It was exciting.
It was also a little frightening. Not because of the unknown itself, but because of the weight of freedom. The responsibility of discovering who you would be when no one else was around to decide the little things in everyday life.
But the excitement spoke louder.
The plan was simple. You would spend a few days in a hotel while patiently looking for an apartment. Your parents insisted that you visit different places before signing any contract; a roof wasn't just a roof, they said, but the setting where the next few years of your life would take shape. It was worth choosing carefully. You could have chosen a shared house and divided the space with other people, but none of those options sparked any enthusiasm. The idea of coming home after class and finding a living room full of strangers, competing for the bathroom or talking late into the night, sounded more exhausting than comforting.
You wanted a room of your own.
Maybe it was a whim, and maybe people expected your first home to be modest, shared, and cramped, the kind that would become funny stories years later. But honestly, after spending so many years saving every penny, you could afford to be a little picky. You weren't looking for anything extravagant, far from it; you just wanted a place you could call your own.
In practice, though, your eagerness to begin your independent adult life got the better of you. You hadn't planned things properly, spent more time—and money—at the hotel than you had expected, and before you realized it, you were racing against the clock.
Now you needed to find somewhere to live as soon as possible, because classes would be starting soon.
It was precisely that sense of urgency that led you to a small newspaper advertisement offering a room available in a mansion.
It was very simple, and there was no description, no list of amenities, no photographs of the property's interior. Just a picture of the façade—old, impressive, and quite beautiful—a phone number to call, and the rent.
Ridiculously cheap.
Roughly eighty percent cheaper than any room you had found up to that point.
That should have set off every alarm imaginable.
Instead, you thought: Wow. What luck!
Without wasting any time, you picked up your phone, saved the number, and called.
It rang only twice.
You didn't even think twice about the faint static crackling through the line before a man's voice answered. Deep, polished, and courteous, it contrasted with the interference that had come before it.
"Good afternoon. How may I help you?"
"Hi. Good afternoon." You spoke politely. "I saw your advertisement, and I was wondering if it would be possible to schedule a visit. I'm interested in the room."
"Ah, of course!" The reply came immediately. "It would be my pleasure to receive you. When would be most convenient for you?"
You relaxed your shoulders.
What a pleasant man. He sounded like a middle-aged gentleman accustomed to dealing with people, the sort who probably wore knitted sweaters and took care of his garden on the weekends.
The two of you arranged a time for the following morning.
You hung up the phone feeling satisfied, convinced that you might have just found the perfect place to begin your new life.
Things started becoming weird the moment you left home.
Your GPS recalculated the route about four times along the way. You simply concluded that the app was terrible. Then your phone lost signal completely.
Well... countryside, right?
The road began to change as well. The traffic gradually disappeared until you were the only car for miles, surrounded by a dense forest that seemed to swallow the sunlight, leaving everything faintly gray and vaguely overcast even on a bright, warm day.
Pretty. A little too isolated for your taste, but pretty. You liked that sort of Twilight vibe.
You turned on the radio to break the silence. Nothing but static. Ah, you'd probably just lost the station. You turned it off without giving it much thought.
A few minutes later, you realized you couldn't hear anything at all. Not even the fleeting sounds of the forest. Or the wind.
Hm. What a quiet place.
All that peace was actually rather pleasant.
But then, a sharp ache behind your eyes made you frown. You really needed to drink more water. Or get more sleep. Or both. Geez.
You kept driving.
When you looked up, you saw enormous iron gates slowly beginning to open.
You smiled. Fancy!
You didn't even stop to wonder why they had opened on their own. You assumed there must be some kind of motion sensor. Rich people loved that sort of technology.
You drove through the gates, gradually slowing down.
Only then did you notice that your headache had disappeared completely.
The long stone driveway ended in front of an enormous mansion. It was even more beautiful than it had looked in the advertisement.
You parked the car, turned off the engine, and spent a few seconds admiring the architecture. For that price, it was an incredible find, for sure.
"Would you be interested?" he asked, extending the rental agreement toward you.
You blinked a few times. You only realized your mouth had been hanging open when you closed it, swallowing hard. Your throat felt dry, and it took you a few seconds to settle yourself in the armchair without looking as though you were about to faint.
"...I assume you have your suspicions about the price. After all, it's a very well-located property."
Oh. Right.
Your suspicions were about the absurdly cheap rent.
Not about the fact that the landlord was a nearly three-meter-tall, completely faceless entity. Not at all.
"Know that this is an excellent place to live."
You glanced around the office for a moment before looking back at him. Or rather, at the place where a face should have been.
It was difficult to argue with how polite he was.
But for the first time since you had walked through the gates of that mansion, you managed to gather enough strength to form an entire sentence.
"I-I... think I... I'm going to need some time to..." You cleared your throat, trying to moisten it, but it felt like a desert. "...think."
"Oh."
Odd as it seemed, he sounded... disappointed. His shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and his posture lost a fraction of its composure, like a real estate agent watching a client back out of a deal at the last minute. Your mind, of course, interpreted that in the worst way possible.
That was it. The end!
Any second now, he would open a portal to hell, rip your soul from your body, maybe torture you first—who knew, demons seemed to enjoy dramatizing those sorts of things—and only then decide what to do with your mortal remains.
Instead, he simply set his teacup down on its saucer with care and gave a small nod.
"Of course. I understand. It's always good to keep your options open."
He rose from the armchair and accompanied you to the entrance of the mansion.
"The doors will always be open, should you change your mind."
You mumbled something that could perhaps be interpreted as a "thank you."
The moment you stepped through the iron gates, you heard them slowly close behind you.
That was when you looked back.
There he was.
Standing perfectly still on the mansion's balcony, his impossibly tall, slender figure silhouetted against the old façade. Even from that distance, the absence of a face seemed to be staring directly at you, following your every movement.
A shiver ran down your spine.
You didn't think twice.
You practically threw yourself into your car, slammed the door shut, turned the key in the ignition, and floored the accelerator. The tires screeched across the gravel as you left the property behind as fast as you could, unable to bring yourself to look in the rearview mirror.
If there was a single thought occupying your mind at that moment, it was this:
No fucking way.
You would rather sleep under a bridge than spend a single night in that mansion!
You were probably losing your mind.
None of this could possibly be real.
I mean, this was the sort of thing that happened in horror movies. And even in horror movies it wouldn't have made much sense, because, let's be honest, at no point had he tried to rip out your organs, snap your neck, or devour your soul.
Quite the opposite.
Despite the suffocating presence, despite the oppressive aura that made every instinct in your body scream at you to run, the man had been polite from beginning to end. He had welcomed you courteously, offered you biscuits...
...and served jasmine tea.
Tea.
What kind of indescribable entity offers people biscuits and tea before discussing a rental agreement?
It was completely insane. Perhaps even more unsettling than if he had tried to kill you.
That night, you couldn't sleep.
You tossed and turned countless times, burying your face in the pillow in the hope of driving the image of that impossibly tall and terrifying man from your mind. Every time you closed your eyes, you found him standing motionless before you, holding his teacup and smiling (?) with the same casual ease as someone entertaining an ordinary guest.
Little by little, your imagination began feeding on the silence of the apartment. The dark corners of your bedroom seemed to deepen, and the feeling that someone was watching you grew slowly, insidiously, until it settled beneath your skin. In the end, you switched on the bedside lamp, embarrassed by your own cowardice yet unable to bear the darkness.
The clock on your nightstand kept ticking, and every so often you found yourself staring at it, convinced its hands had begun moving more slowly just to prolong your insomnia. The apartment was wrapped in that dense silence peculiar to the early hours of the morning, and with every minute you remained awake, you seemed to leave a little more room for doubt to turn into fear.
Maybe that afternoon's encounter had been nothing more than a hallucination. Maybe you were exhausted, vulnerable, on the verge of a nervous breakdown after being left without a home and sleeping in a dingy hotel room. Even so, every attempt to explain rationally what had happened dissolved before you could even put it into words.
When the digital clock finally read three in the morning, you let out a weary sigh and sat up in bed.
You had to put an end to this.
Or at the very least, prove to yourself that you weren't losing your mind.
So you did the most counterproductive thing possible: you opened your laptop and spent hours researching the mansion.
You dug through old news articles, public records, city maps, obscure forums, conspiracy theories, and every corner of the internet that might be hiding a single clue.
There was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The only information you managed to find was that the property had been purchased years ago by an unknown owner.
The next morning, you dragged yourself out of bed with heavy dark circles under your eyes and the unpleasant feeling that you hadn't rested for a single minute. The entire night seemed to have collapsed into a blur of repetitive thoughts.
Maybe a cup of coffee would help.
You headed to the nearest Starbucks and got in line. As you stared at the menu without really seeing it, another idea slowly began to take shape.
Someone in this town had to know something.
It was impossible for a mansion that size to have stood there for years without arousing anyone's curiosity.
When it was your turn to order, you hesitated. Your fingers tapped lightly against the counter as you wondered just how insane you were about to sound.
Excuse me... do you happen to know of a secluded mansion where a faceless man lives?
No. There was definitely no normal way to ask that question.
Even so, your curiosity was beginning to outweigh your embarrassment. After all, after what you had seen the previous afternoon, looking like a lunatic in front of a barista no longer ranked among the biggest problems in your life.
When your turn finally came, you took a deep breath and tried to look like the most ordinary person in the world.
"Uh... a café latte, please."
You waited for the barista to ring up your order before clearing your throat, pretending that your next question wasn't completely absurd.
"Excuse me... would you happen to know of a somewhat secluded mansion that's renting out a room?" You tried to smile, but the expression died halfway across your face.
The barista looked up from the register and frowned slightly.
"A mansion?"
You nodded.
"Yeah... it's a little outside the city. They're renting out a room."
She seemed to think for a few seconds, searching her memory.
"Sorry... I have no idea which one you're talking about."
Your stomach sank.
"Are you sure? It's a huge house. Really old."
"I've honestly never heard of it." She shrugged as she held out the card reader. "Maybe it's in another town?"
"No..." you replied, more to yourself than to her. "It's here."
She simply offered an awkward smile. "Sorry. I've never heard of that mansion."
You paid for your coffee, thanked her, and stepped away from the counter with the warm cup in your hands. Sitting down by the window, you watched the flow of people outside while trying to make sense of it all.
You spent hours turning the whole thing over in your head, sinking deeper into the sort of existential crisis that eventually leaves a person too exhausted to keep panicking. In the end, you settled on the only coping mechanism your mind could offer: pretending that none of it mattered. So what if you'd met a supernatural creature? The world hadn't stopped spinning because of it.
...Yeah. Whatever.
You couldn't spend the rest of your life dwelling on that visit. Whatever it was that you had found inside that haunted mansion, life refused to wait for you to make sense of it. College would begin in only a few weeks, your savings were shrinking with alarming speed, and the hotel room... sigh. That reality hit the moment you returned to your room.
Taped to the door was a white envelope that immediately caught your attention.
You opened it without much concern, only to feel your expression fall as you read the first few lines.
It was a notice ordering you to vacate your room.
Seriously?
You read the paper a second time, then a third, hoping to find some kind of misunderstanding hidden between the lines.
Mandatory checkout in seven days.
You slowly lowered the paper, staring at the empty hallway.
What the hell?
Since when did hotels hand out eviction notices? Did that even make sense? You had paid every bill on time. Maybe the worst thing you'd done was forget a towel hanging from the window. This had to be some kind of joke.
You let out a long sigh, carefully folded the notice, and slipped it into your pocket. Your hand lingered on the doorknob for a moment before turning it. As soon as you stepped inside, you closed the door behind you and let your gaze wander around the room.
You rubbed your face with both hands and walked over to the desk. Feeling sorry for yourself wasn't going to solve anything. The problem wasn't going to disappear.
You opened your laptop and took a deep breath, bracing yourself for another marathon of listings, misleading photographs, outrageous rents, and real estate agents swearing they had found the perfect opportunity. Deep down, a part of you still clung to the hope of finding somewhere at least halfway decent before the deadline ran out.
And so, your search for a place to live began. Again.