Three months had passed since Lin Ze first discovered the sealed wooden box in the attic. Three months of trying—and failing—to forget it.
Life had dragged him forward whether he wanted it or not. He'd accepted a junior position at a mid-sized civil engineering firm downtown, the kind of job that paid rent but left him staring at structural diagrams until his eyes burned. Evenings were spent in a tiny rented studio apartment on the other side of the city, far enough from the old tong lau that he could pretend the house—and everything in it—no longer existed.
But the box haunted him.
He'd gone back twice in those first few weeks, armed with bolt cutters and a flashlight, determined to force it open. Both times he'd stood at the attic door, heart pounding, and both times something stopped him—an inexplicable dread that crawled up his spine and whispered that whatever was inside should stay buried. In the end he'd left the box untouched, telling himself it was just junk, just another of Grandfather's eccentricities.
Tonight, though, he had a legitimate reason to return.
Grandmother's eightieth birthday was approaching, and Lin Ze had promised to visit. He told himself it was only duty. Deep down he knew better.
The old house looked exactly the same under the sodium streetlights: peeling paint, sagging balconies, the faint smell of damp concrete. Grandmother greeted him at the door with a warm hug and the familiar scent of jasmine tea. She looked frailer than he remembered, but her eyes were still bright.
Lin Ze's father, Lin Yi, arrived an hour later. Tall, thin, perpetually distracted by work calls even on family nights. The three of them ate a quiet dinner—steamed fish, bok choy, rice—while Grandmother reminisced about Grandfather's younger days. Lin Ze listened politely, waiting for the right moment.
It came after the dishes were cleared.
"Dad," he said casually, swirling the last of his tea, "when I was cleaning the attic a few months ago, I found a locked wooden box hidden way in the back. Small, dark wood, old brass lock. Did Grandpa ever mention anything like that to you?"
Lin Yi frowned, setting his phone face-down on the table—a rare gesture of full attention. "A locked box? No, never. I helped go through most of his things after… well, after. There was nothing like that in the will, nothing in his study or bedroom. Probably just some old junk he forgot about. You know how he was—collected all sorts of odd things. If it wasn't important enough to mention in the will, it's almost certainly not worth worrying over."
Lin Ze nodded, trying to look convinced. The answer was exactly what he'd expected, yet it left him more unsettled than before. If even his father didn't know…
He let the subject drop.
Later, unable to sleep in his childhood bedroom, Lin Ze lay staring at the ceiling and listening to the house settle around him. The old building creaked and groaned like it always had, but tonight every sound felt deliberate—footsteps that weren't there, a faint scrape from overhead.
From the attic.
He told himself it was imagination and eventually drifted into uneasy dreams.
The next morning, Grandmother was already up when Lin Ze came downstairs. She stood in Grandfather's former bedroom—now kept exactly as he'd left it—dust cloth in hand, humming an old Cantonese tune. Sunlight filtered through lace curtains, illuminating motes that danced like slow fireflies.
"I thought I'd give this room a proper clean," she said cheerfully. "It's been too long. Your grandfather would scold me for letting dust gather."
Lin Ze smiled and offered to help. Together they moved books, straightened papers, wiped shelves. Grandmother chatted about small things: the neighbor's new dog, rising vegetable prices, how Lin Ze should find a nice girl and settle down.
They were carefully lifting a tall porcelain vase from the top of an antique cabinet when it happened.
Grandmother's hand slipped—just a fraction—and the vase teetered. Lin Ze lunged to catch it, but he was a second too late. It tipped, fell, and shattered against the hardwood floor with a sharp, musical crash.
Blue-and-white shards scattered everywhere.
"Oh dear," Grandmother sighed, pressing a hand to her chest. "That was one of his favorites. From the Qing dynasty, he always said—though I suspect he bought it at a market for twenty dollars."
Lin Ze knelt to gather the pieces, apologizing even though it wasn't his fault. As he pushed aside a larger fragment, something glinted among the porcelain dust.
A key.
Small, old-fashioned, made of darkened brass with an intricate bow shaped like a coiled dragon. The entire shank and bit were stained a deep, unnatural crimson—as though it had been dipped in fresh paint that had since dried and cracked. Yet when Lin Ze picked it up, the red coating felt hard, almost lacquered.
He turned it over in his palm, a chill racing up his arm.
Grandmother's humming stopped abruptly. She stared at the key as if seeing a ghost.
"Where… where did that come from?" she whispered.
"It was inside the vase," Lin Ze said. "Hidden in the hollow base, I think."
Grandmother slowly lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, face pale. For a long moment she said nothing. Then, voice barely above a breath:
"That key belongs to the box in the attic."
Lin Ze's heart stuttered. "You know about the box?"
She nodded, eyes distant. "Your grandfather… in his younger days, before he settled into engineering, he worked as a private investigator. Nothing glamorous—mostly insurance fraud, missing persons, the occasional jealous spouse. But there were a few cases… cases he could never solve. Things that didn't make sense. Things that frightened even him."
She looked up at Lin Ze, and for the first time he saw real fear in her eyes.
"He kept files on those cases. Detailed notes, photographs, evidence he couldn't explain. When he finally quit that work, he locked everything in a wooden box and hid it in the attic. He told me never to open it, never to let anyone open it. Said some doors, once opened, cannot be closed again."
Lin Ze's mouth went dry. "Why hide the key in a vase?"
Grandmother gave a sad, tired smile. "Because he knew himself too well. Toward the end, he worried his mind was going. He was afraid that one day he might forget why the box must stay sealed—and open it anyway. So he hid the key where he would never look. Inside something beautiful but fragile. A reminder, perhaps, that some things are better left broken than whole."
Silence filled the room, broken only by distant traffic outside.
Lin Ze closed his fist around the red key. It felt warm now—too warm.
Grandmother reached out and gently touched his wrist. "Promise me you'll leave it alone, Ah Ze. Some of your grandfather's ghosts should stay buried."
He wanted to promise. Truly.
But even as he opened his mouth to agree, the key pulsed once against his skin—like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
And deep in the attic above them, something shifted heavily in the dark.