Do you hear a whisper in the dark?

      With a loud thud, a hefty volume of a thick book landed on the table. The folio stirred up dust that seemed to have accumulated here for at least ten years. The cracked surface of the wooden table could have served as a slate for writing some important information in the dust.       Jinu raised his gaze to the girl who arrived half an hour after the appointed time. It seemed she only enjoyed scheduling meetings either in places that were the complete opposite of dry and bright rooms or simply where it was uncomfortable to stay even for five minutes. And then she would be late by another ten. This unpunctual girl had once again made him wait for thirty minutes. It was unclear how long she planned to keep Jinu waiting. Of course, one could explain this by her unwillingness to reveal the fact of their meetings—who knows, someone might notice—but seriously...       What’s her problem with dry and bright rooms, normal conditions, all conveniences, a non-flickering light, and a non-leaking ceiling? Is it so hard to arrange meetings in such places?       "What’s this?" Jinu nodded his head towards the massive tome, waving his hand in front of his face to disperse the clouds of dust that had risen.       Rumi said, sitting down opposite him: "A book.”       “Uh-huh, familiar title,” he sighed deeply as a light breeze blew through some crack behind him, causing the lone light bulb hanging from a spool of wire to sway. The already dim light flickered. Rumi suggested meeting in a place very far from the concept of civilization: an old basement of an abandoned store that hadn’t been used for years. This was evident from the shabby walls, lack of cell signal, and the occasional scurrying of rats. One could only wonder how such a fastidious girl managed to find these places. Jinu wearily ran his hand through his hair. “I didn’t know you could read.”       “Do you read by syllables or by letters?” she retorted immediately and opened the book.       The spine hit the surface of the table with a loud clap, raising even more dust into the air. Jinu already regretted not wiping the table before his unexpectedly found partner came. One could have assumed that she would not only play on his nerves but also on the nerves of the dust and the rats that had scattered into the dark corners.       “I borrowed this book from Zoey,” Rumi explained in her usual calm tone and began to leisurely turn the yellowed pages. “It describes about a thousand proven and effective ways to exorcise a demon from a person. Many of the cases described here…”—she gently ran her hand over an illustration—“…saved people’s lives. And I think that… perhaps it will help us too?”       Upside down, the illustration looked like a genuine creation of some demonic entity, but in reality, it was just an innocent image of a child running across a field from an approaching dark mist. Or perhaps retreating, considering the joy reflected on the girl’s face on the pages of the book.       “You borrowed it, meaning you stole it?” he couldn’t help but tease and raised an eyebrow.       “That’s a rather one-sided view of the situation. I prefer to say ‘borrowed.’”       “As you say,” Jinu replied dryly and crossed his arms over his chest, turning his gaze somewhere aside. Dusty shelves seem so… interesting.       Silence didn’t last long. The word ‘silence’ lost all meaning in her presence…       “So are you with me or not?”       “Do you see anyone else here?” he looked tiredly at Rumi. It was midnight, and she was still going around in circles.       “The exit is over there,” the girl nodded her head somewhere behind him, and Jinu shot her a look that said, “I know how I came in.” “If you don’t want to rid yourself of the demon, please, I’ll only help myself.”       “If it’s possible to save people from demons, why kill them?” he responded somewhat too sharply. Having startled himself with the sharpness of his words, he almost wanted to start justifying himself, but Rumi interrupted him.       “You can save them only if they haven’t turned yet.”       And she lowered her gaze into the book.       For some reason, in this movement, he saw so much concealed pain that his own heart tightened unbearably. It must be unpleasant to kill those who were once human. But a demon that has completely taken control of the body and mind is no longer human.       “So what’s the first method?” he hastily changed the subject and leaned closer, resting his elbows on the table. But he immediately pulled his hands back as he remembered the thick layer of dust.       “Do you want to check all thousand?” Rumi raised an eyebrow and fixed a questioning look on him.       “Are you in a hurry?”       Not finding a response to that, she shrugged and stared at the pages of the book with a serious expression.       “So, the first method.”       After three hours of exhausting reading and checking what turned out to be not very effective methods, Jinu was already on the verge of collapse from fatigue, and he had planned to rest for at least three hours in silence and peace that night. But every time he looked at Rumi, who was overflowing with energy and a desire to find that one method among the seemingly endless thousands that would help them both, he somehow found strength in his body.       Jinu tossed the burnt-out candles from the first ritual into the trash and, with a weary sigh, sat down opposite the girl. She was intently reading the text, but Jinu couldn't help but notice how her expression changed. It shifted from relaxed to tense: her lips tightened, and her brows furrowed. Then Rumi suddenly flipped through five pages at once.       “What did you skip?” Jinu immediately asked.       “Nothing.”       “Nothing?” he insisted and reached for the book. “Blank pages without a stain or a mark?”       Peeking out from behind the spine of the book, she shot him a deadly glare that clearly told him not to interfere.       “There’s an ineffective method there,” Rumi explained and lowered her eyes again.       “Why? Have you already checked it?”       “Just don’t annoy me!” she slammed the book shut and set it aside. “I’m telling you it’s ineffective.”       “The hundred-plus methods we’ve already tried turned out to be ineffective too. According to the logic of your little book, maybe this one is actually effective?”       “Maybe it is effective,” she easily agreed and sighed, leaning back in her chair, which immediately creaked pitifully. “But it only freed you from possession for a very short time. Do you really want that?”       Jinu didn’t even need to think. The mere thought of spending even a couple of hours, or even just a few minutes, in deafening silence filled him with hope for something vaguely resembling peace. So, without taking his gaze off her eyes, he replied seriously:       “Yes.”       Rumi shrugged.       “Fine,” she said and extended her palm.       Jinu stared in surprise first at her hand, then back at the girl, who continued to hold her palm out towards him with an expressionless face.       “The ritual states that you need to hold hands with a close person,” Rumi quickly explained upon seeing the confusion on his face.       He bitterly smirked and shook his head.       “I’m not against it, but I don’t see any close people around.”       “All people are either asleep or at most at least a kilometer away from you,” she rolled her eyes as if the situation was already starting to annoy her and moved her hand a little closer to him, opening it wider as if inviting him. “And I’m here. Nearby.”       Yes… Nearby.       A strange word in relation to Rumi because Jinu always thought that she might be physically close, but in reality, she was infinitely far away. Like a star you see every night in front of you, but no matter how much you reach out your hand, you can’t touch it.       And now Rumi was here.       Nearby.       Her icy fingers covered his warm palm, and she almost immediately pulled away from it. Her squinted gaze seemed to say for its owner: “Wow, your hands are cold…” However, despite this, she intertwined their fingers together.       Jinu had always had cold skin. But now, where her hand touched his, warmth seemed to spread, comparable to the heat of lava. And the voices in his head fell silent.       And in principle, everything ceased to matter except for the amber depths across from him, which, with every second of contact, pulled him deeper into the abyss of his own tranquility. For the first time in four hundred years, Jinu felt that today he might even be able to sleep like an ordinary person. Without nightmares and anxious voices in his head.       He was ready to enjoy this idyll (even in a completely unsuitable place for such actions) for eternity and even longer, if it weren't for Rumi's phone ringing. She immediately withdrew her hand, giving Jinu what he perceived as an apologetic glance before reaching into her jacket pocket. As if she regretted that both visual and physical contact had to be broken. As if she actually cared.       “Yes, Zoey? The book…? What book…?” she smiled foolishly, tapping her brightly painted nails on the cover of that very book. “Ah… Yes… The book… Yes, got it… I’ll look for it,” then she put the phone back in her pocket and pushed the tome towards Jinu. “Here, take it.”       “Why do I need this?” he sighed.       “You’ll return it to Zoey, tell her you stole it,” Rumi got up and began gathering her things with which they had been performing rituals.       He smirked emotionlessly.       “Are you serious?”       “Only your face is more serious when you’re joking,” she waved him off and disappeared behind the wall. “See you!”       Rumi ran out of the building.       Jinu leisurely exited through the back entrance.       Rumi would never admit to him that the marks on her body manifest critically rarely after that incident.       Jinu would never admit to her that the voices in his head have quieted and no longer hold power over him after that incident.       Neither would say anything. But both would inevitably find a reason to at least briefly touch each other for the sake of that saving tranquility.