Andromeda

VII.

 "Do you want to see the rest of the place?" Jeongguk asked me. I jumped slightly at the sound of his voice. I was getting somewhat used to the old, echoing building, but it was still jarring to hear a voice from somewhere behind me. Perhaps I did believe in ghosts, after all. 

The boy's big doe eyes glittered in the moonlight of the circle.

"That depends on if you think we'll run into a ghost while we're walking around."

Jimin laughed. "If there is a ghost here, we've never run into her."

"You say that like we spend a lot of time here," Yoongi muttered into his elbow. Unlike his younger counterpart, he was still resembling a cat sprawled out in a beam of sunshine on the silk-covered mattress.

"You don't?" I asked.

Taehyung and Jimin shook their heads.

"We really only come here when we have an extended break. It's a long way away from Korea, you realize," Yoongi said.

"Please don't be offended, he's almost always like this," Jimin said quickly, his eyes pleading.

I waved off his concerns with a smile. "I like him."

Jeongguk jumped to his feet in some sort of move that only someone very physically active could accomplish. "Man, you fit in great here."

At the word that the boys had said in English several times their videos, I realized just how quickly I had become accustomed to their accents. Hopefully, that meant they didn't mind my accent, either.

Andromeda had followed the other few boys a few minutes before, and I knew they were coming back when I heard annoyed shouting in the general direction.

I laughed suddenly. The boys looked at me with expressions of confusion. "The acoustics in this place are great," I explained.

"They are!" Taehyung shouted. Jimin jumped in surprise, and we all winced at how the yell reverberated through the halls. "You should hear us sing to each other from different corners of the place. It creates such a cool effect," he said, much softer this time.

"Tae, how is it that even when you're being quiet, you're loud?" Yoongi whined, covering his ears.

Taehyung raised his hands sheepishly. "Talent?" he said. "Also, having Hobi-hyung as a teacher is helpful."

"Hey!" Hoseok yelled from some other hallway.

"I think your Hobi-hyung disagrees," I said, biting back a smile.

"He gives himself too much credit," Namjoon said.

The echoing yelling and the ability to communicate with people that were nowhere close by were both getting strange at this point. "Is there any place in here where you can't hear absolutely everything?"

A couple of them nodded, and Jeongguk pointed straight at the ceiling. "When you actually go inside the old stores there isn't an echo. But the best place to go is the rooftop. When it's warmer we go out there a lot."

I looked around the building that seemed to stretch for miles and had several floors. It was such a grandiose place.

"You're free to go anywhere you like," a voice said from behind me.

I screamed and spun around, shocking Andromeda perhaps just as much as she had shocked me.

"I'm sorry!" she yelled, raising her hands in something that looked like a defensive pose. "I didn't mean to scare you!"

"No- no," I sputtered, trying to get my heart to stop racing in my chest from the shock. "It's fine. I guess it's just a little weird that you guys can talk to one another from different hallways, but I can't even hear you walk up next to me."