"Are you sure you want our help and you're not just driving us out here to be murdered?" asked Seungmin as he sat in the passenger seat of Minho's vehicle as the car slowly bumped along the cracked, paved drive.

After having agreed to Minho's vague request, Seungmin and Hyunjin had both been picked up outside the video store in the late evening before being immediately driven to the abandoned mental institution without any further elaboration. Seungmin was becoming more and more uneasy about the whole thing with each passing second.

"Do you have some secret sin we don't know about?" asked Hyunjin as he sat with a smirk in the back seat, his arms crossed across his chest. "Do we need to find some sort of last-minute confessional?"

"Stop acting like what I said is irrational!" snapped Seungmin as he gestured towards the haunted looking grounds surrounding them. "We barely know this man and we're out in the middle of freaking no where at night!"

"You do realize that said man is sitting right beside you, right?" asked Minho with a smirk of his own, Hyunjin laughing from the backseat.

Seungmin pouted, crossing his arms across his chest at being ganged up on as the burnt out remains of the mental institution loomed larger and larger in front of them the closer they got.

"Well, can you at least tell us what we're exactly doing here beside the vague 'you're looking for something'?" asked Seungmin. "Like 'something' could be anything..."

"I'm just looking for something suspicious," said Minho as he finally brought the car to a stop, parking it before turning the keys in the ignition to shut off the car. 

"That's not any better..."

"Look...I'm just trying to see if there are clues here that prove that someone wasn't accidentally killed but murdered."

"So this is something that could get us killed!" exclaimed Seungmin.

"Oh for crying out loud! If you're too scared to come in, you can just stay in the car and be a lookout!" snapped Minho. He was already tired from the events of last night, his irritation spiking more when Bonita hadn't answered his Facetime call a half hour ago.

Turning to reach down towards the floor of the backseat, Minho grabbed a flashlight before getting out of the car, mumbling to himself. As he slammed the door shut behind him and started to walk off, Hyunjin leaned down to grab a flashlight off the ground too.

"Way to set him off," said Hyunjin.

"Oh, don't go blaming all this on me!" shouted Seungmin as Hyunjin slipped out of the car and broke into a light jog to catch up with Minho.

"You're coming?" asked Minho as he came short of the semi-boarded up entryway, forgotten strands of yellow caution tape slowly blowing in the night breeze as if they were waving at him in greeting.

"Well, it's dumb for you to go alone when you brought us to help," said Hyunjin. "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!"

Minho gave a small smirk, rolling his eyes before flicking his flashlight on. Taking a tentative step forward, Minhi moved to step into the entryway. His feet crunched over broken glass as his flashlight beam immediately lit up the carnage inside. A lot of it had been decorated by vandals that had decided to practice their spray paint art. Somehow though the vibrant colors of the spray paints did nothing but make the whole place more haunting than it had been from the outside.

Ducking under a light fixture that spun in slow, lazy circles from the ceiling, Minho made his way over to what remained of the reception desk. It looked like it had undergone every natural disaster in the book. Papers were scattered everywhere whilst the equipment and such behind it were in various states of disarray. Somewhere deeper within the bowels of the building the meticulous dripping of water echoed out like a metronome. Minho passed the beam of his light over the papers, trying to find anything left behind that might act as a clue. Hyunjin was a few steps away from him behind the reception area, looking with his own flashlight for clues. The silence between them was the most deafening of all.

Not finding anything in the reception area that could be of use, Minho made his way towards what remained of the institution's map that hung sandwiched between two long out of service elevators that groaned like ghosts. His flashlight looked at the faded 'you are here' mark before letting the beam of light flick over the other rooms around it.

"There's a records storage room on the third floor," said Minho as Hyunjin approached him from behind. "I think we should try looking there."

"Aye aye. You would know, Lee Know."

Minho turned just in time to see Hyunjin smirk, watching as he walked like some sort of carefree pirate towards the half propped open stairwell door nearby. Minho moved to follow after him. As the two of them ascended through various layers of debris, it made them constantly feel like they were traveling from the past to the present. It was like time had glitched and was starting to overlay itself.

"Careful of this last step," said Hyunjin as he half jumped over a crumbling bit that looked like it had been mold's dinner. "That's not going to be sturdy enough to step on."

Hyunjin briefly tucked the flashlight into his waistband before leaning towards Minho a few steps below him with an outstretched hand. Minho contemplated the offered hand for a moment before eventually reaching out to grab it. With Hyunjin's help, he got over that step and onto the final stoop that would grant them access to the third floor.

"Why do I have a feeling this isn't your first time exploring places like this?" asked Minho as he entered the door that led onto the third floor, a place that housed a mixture of former patient rooms and offices.

"It's because it's not. I like exploring," Hyunjin said. "It's interesting to learn the stories of abandoned things."

"That's an interesting way to put it," said Minho as he walked slowly down the hall, scanning his flashlight beam both ways as he walked.

The patient rooms were the most haunting place on the entire floor. The shadows that the moonlight couldn't quite eliminate in the rooms were dark enough to hide things from view. It made Minho half wonder if former patients were hiding in the shadows watching them and waiting to strike.

"I think I found the record room," said Hyunjin, who was a few steps ahead of Minho, pointing out plaque on a door with his flashlight beam.

"Good. Lets see if there is anything in here that might not have been cleared out," said Minho.

It took the two of them shouldering the door to get it to slowly squeal open across the mildewed tiles. With the small crack granting them entrance, they each took turns sliding in sideways to enter the room. The room had file cabinets from wall to wall that surrounded the entire room. Most of the drawers looked like they were open, empty file folders hidden inside them.

'Of course we're going to not find anything,' thought Minho as he moved to peek into the file cabinets anyway, noticing that — even though the folders were empty — the names of some of the patients were still able to be read on the tags.

"Oh, this could be promising," said Minho out loud to himself, causing Hyunjin to turn towards him with an arched brow.

"Did you find something?"

Minho grabbed a folder, digging it out to better observe what remained of the name tag with his flashlight.

"The files appear to be gone, but the names are still readable on the folders."

"Okay, great, but I still don't know what name I should be looking for..."

"Just pull out all the folders," said Minho. "I'll go through them."

Nodding, Hyunjin moved to do just that. The two of them worked in silence for a moment yanking folders from their home and moving to put them all on top of an empty table in the middle of the room. As Minho was trying to organize the folders to search through the names, he heard a gasp from Hyunjin. Lifting his head from his sorting, he turned to see that Hyunjin had frozen in shock as he stared at a name on one of the folders. It honestly looked as if he had seen a ghost.

"Did you find something?" asked Minho.

"I just...this folder..."

"What about it?"

Breaking his gaze with it, he met Minho's eyes as he said, "It belonged to my biological father, a father that I've been hiding from my whole life."