Tag: #horror

Julius and Julia walk home hand-in-hand, just soaking in giddiness. He says that even with the most delicious food, if you eat it too fast, you’ll get indigestion. He doesn’t want them to get indigestion of the heart by going too fast.

Julia asks a little wistfully, “What if there isn’t much time?” and he scoffs that it’s not like she’s going to die tomorrow. She’s so happy to just sit there holding his hand that she insists on one minute longer.

Julius mom arrives with pastries for him, and they jump up in alarm, barely managing to unlock their hands before she comes up to the roof. She wonders what Kate was doing here so late, and julius awkwardly invents an errand she was here for and sends her home.

Julius mom catches on right away and comments on kate’s level and size, and warns him not to even try foot-acting in front of her. She knows they’re dating and calls him out on it, but he shoves a pastry in his mouth and ignores her.

Julius insists that there’s nothing going on with him and Kate , and she says he can call it whatever he wants, just as long as he’s using condoms. He groans and asks if she really wants to be talking about this stuff with her son, but she says it’s better than him making babies by accident. Truth. Listen to your
mother!

She finally leaves, and julius rushes to text Julia that it’s safe to come back. She’s relieved to hear that it went okay, and pouts when he says they should head inside. She mentions getting enough sleep earlier at the motel, and he gets all fired up again at the mention of the motel, and bans the word altogether.

In the middle of the night, Julia sneaks out of kate’s room and into julius’s, to watch him sleep. She lies down next to him and is actually able to touch his face, and she sighs, “You’re a ghost—how can you like him for real? What are you going to do? You’re crazy.”
She tells herself that it’s okay because she’s just enjoying the feeling of being in a relationship, though she doesn’t sound convinced.

Kate comes outside to get a glass of water and runs into Julia as she’s coming out of julius room. Julia quickly says she was just wandering about because she was bored, and feels awkward when kate sweetly calls her aunty.

In the morning, julius is the one sending Julia little signals in front of the others, as he winks at her to meet him in the locker room. He feeds her herbs to keep her healthy in the sweltering heat, and she presses his hand to her face, calling that her best medicine.

Felix interrupts them to tell Julia about a phone call for her, and looks curiously over at julius , who’s doing a terrible job of acting natural. She picks up the phone and doesn’t realize that it’s julius’s mom on the line, and when she asks for her birthdate, she accidentally answers with her own, not kate’s.

Not knowing this, Mrs Jane reads the fortune at her request, and says that this girl is already dead. Mom says that can’t be and tells her about catching Julia and Kate together last night, and Mrs Jane realizes that she’s talking about Julia . She gets hopeful to hear that they were together late at night, but deflates to hear that they were simply talking.
**********

Officer John drops Lisa off at the restaurant and waits to greet julius , and happens to hear Julia humming a familiar tune. He remembers her singing the same song at  her Dad’s restaurant years ago, and the way she’d smile to greet him.


Kate does the same now, and it makes him eerily fixated on her. It continues to bother him when he’s at work, as he remembers Dad’s shoelaces tied in Julia’s special way, and he looks up Kate’s information on the computer.

That night, John opens up his drawer and takes out the cracked cell phone that was hidden away.
He contemplates the phone and then takes out a suitcase that’s filled with scary serial kidnapping and/or murder gear and broken security cameras, and tosses the phone inside too.
********

On their way home from Julia’s dad restaurant whom they both ran into at the market earlier that day after julia had introduced him to her dad as a friend.

Julius squirms like a big baby when Julia gets ready to prick his finger to relieve his indigestion, and she asks why he ate two whole bowls of rice. He says that it was the polite thing to do in front of an elder, and he felt bad for the him(Julia’s dad) , who had such sad eyes when he talked about his daughter passing away.

He’s feeling better by the walk back, so she requests more handholding. He’s only happy to oblige, and looks a little sad when she breaks contact to run over to a playground. He chases her around, and then makes a big fuss when she trips and falls.

He sits her down to check her foot and treats her so tenderly that she swoons all over again. He wonders why she’s staring, and she replies, “Because I like you. I like you so, so much.” There’s a long pause as they look at each other without saying a word, and then they sit on the swings together, holding hands.

She says that she was too busy to do anything but work, and she thanks him so sincerely for all her new experiences that he darts up and declares that they’ll go on an overnight trip.

She asks why he changed his mind when he was so against her trying to jump him before, and he half-mumbles an admission: “I changed my mind. I want to go on a trip with you. I’m not going to hold back anymore, so you’ve been warned.” It’s her turn to be stunned silent.

Meanwhile, Julia is in a very different mood on the other side of the wall, and leaves kate’s body to go visit Mrs Jane in the middle of the night. She terrifies her awake, of course, being a ghost and all, and tells her about the trip with julius.

She thinks that’s good news, but wonders why Julia looks so sad about it. She doesn’t understand it either—tomorrow she could get what she’s been wanting all this time and finally resolve her grudge and move on…

Julia finally declared that she is not happy and she  liked julius so much. The things he says to me, the way he looks at me, the way it feels when he holds my hand—they’re all things I’ve never felt before when I was alive. They’re so warm, and I feel like my heart is softening.”

Mrs cuts her off in a grave tone: “Get it together. Do you know what the most dangerous thing is to a ghost? It’s feelings. You think you’re a person and hurt and feel sad, and happy. And that’s where greed comes from—the greed to remain among the living, even as a malevolent ghost!”

She warns her that malevolent ghosts are not the same as her—they never disappear and wander forever, stuck amongst the worst of people, causing evil. She clasps Julia’s hands and begs her to steel herself and resolve her grudge, and move on to a better place. Tears fall as she nods, knowing that Mrs Jane is right about what she has to do. Mrs Jane comforts her and hugs her close, and she cries into her shoulder.

Julia is subdued at work the next day, even when julius whispers his plans to get them out of here as early as possible today. Mike chooses today of all days to insist on a staff night out, and julius has to say no so many times that he ends up snapping at him.

Julia takes the morning to go see her Dad, thinking that it’s her last day here as a ghost. She shows him how to do stuff more efficiently in the restaurant, and he picks up on the fact that she’s acting like they won’t see each other for a long time.

She tamps down her tears and says that she just might be busy for a while and can’t come as often, and he promises to do as she instructs. She thinks to herself that she might never see him again, and Dad should stop thinking about her and be healthy and happy with Alex now.

Julius makes sure to close early and tells Julia to pack and meet upstairs. He notes that she seems quiet, and when he guesses that she’s just so excited that she can’t express it, she goes with that.
But she looks sad when she’s alone, and has to pep-talk herself into packing and going on the trip. She knows she has to stick to her original plan and go, but she wars with herself for wanting to stay just a little longer.

Julius gets delayed when his Mom calls him drunk, and he asks Julia to meet him at the train station. She sits on the rooftop thinking back to all the things she’s experienced with julius , from their first kiss to their first handhold, and decides to put one foot in front of the other.

John watches as she leaves and then creeps up to the roof, where the dog barks at him aggressively. If he IS possessed and dogs can see ghosts.

He roots around Kate’s room and finds all of her ghost-warding paraphernalia, from scythe to strings of garlic, crosses, talismans, and ghost-warding beans. He throws them angrily, perhaps having connected all the dots between Julia and kate.

Julius arrives at the bar to pick his Mom up, only to find her totally sober. It’s not even a surprise anymore that she lied about that, but then Bella arrives too, and his mom invents an excuse to leave them alone.

Bella suggests a walk on their old college campus, and tells julius that she actually saw him first when they were in school, but he seemed so uninterested in her. She wonders if maybe they were so comfortable around each other and so used to each other that she didn’t know her own feelings.

He tries to cut her off, but she asks to speak first, knowing that she might not be able to get it out. But he cuts her off anyway since his news has to come first, and tells her that he has someone special in his life.
She can guess that it’s Kate without having to be told, and gets embarrassed at the rejection, wondering how she’s going to face him from now on.

Julius takes a moment to call Julia because he’s late to meet her at the train station, but she doesn’t answer. She’s actually still sitting in the playground in their neighborhood, purposely ignoring the call because she thinks he’s at the station looking for her.

She stares down at her phone and apologizes for not going: “But today isn’t the day. I can’t go like this. I know it’s selfish, but just a little longer… a little longer.”

She comes back home and calls out to julius , ready for him to be mad at her, but then he arrives behind her and starts apologizing profusely for not showing up. He assumes that she left her phone behind and waited for him, and she doesn’t bother explaining that she didn’t go either.

He makes it up to her by cooking her a fancy  dinner, and tells her that he’ll always cook whatever she wants to eat. She says that what she really wants is fried intestines, and he cringes, but agrees to do it if she’ll forgive him for tonight.

Julia is surprised, and he admits that he’s been dragged around by those feelings for a really long time, and letting go feels like a relief. He turns to her and adds, “What I’m saying is, you have to take responsibility for me. You’re dead if you abandon me.”
She reaches out to touch his face, and he brings her hand up to his lips to kiss her gently. He kisses her softly on the lips before leaning them down into the tent, where he lies down on top of her and starts to unbutton his shirt. He reaches down to unbutton hers, and she squeezes her eyes shut nervously.

The Virgin Ghostess
Chapter 8
By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel

Once it sinks in that kate has just given her permission to possess her, Julia bounds over to give Kate a giant bear hug, squealing in delight. Kate stands there stiffly with her fists clenched, while Julia lifts her up and calls her pretty, and declares that they should be friendly now: “Call me aunty !”

Julia shows her Dad’s restaurant from across the street and says that it might not look like much now, but used to have lines of cab drivers out the door every day. She sighs that if she’d known she’d die so young, she would’ve done more, had a boyfriend, lived like everyone else.
Kate asks why she died, but Julia doesn’t know since she has no memory of her death. Julia asks in turn why she suddenly changed her mind, and Kate admits that she used to be satisfied just watching julius from far away, but now she wants more.
Julia encourages her to keep wanting more from life, and to stop holding everything in: “Live like a person, Kate !” She says that they’re one body now, and eggs kate on to be more assertive.

In the morning, it’s definitely Julia inside kate’s body, because the first thing she does is sidle up to julius and ask, “I read this in a magazine somewhere—is it true that a man is most… vital between ten and eleven in the morning? she actually looks right at his crotch while asking the question. He hurriedly crosses his legs, which just makes her convinced that it IS true.

Bella is mortified to remember her impulsive drunken kiss with julius as she heads to work, and julius picks up his phone to call her, but hesitates.

The restaurant will be closed for the next two days, and kitchen staff excitedly discusses their vacation plans.  chef Mike seems at a loss for what to do, not that he lets on—he keeps asking what the others are doing, wanting to tag along. Julia is happy to learn that they have vacation days, and when she pushes Mike out of the way, the boys decide she’s back to being weird.

Mike calls his buddy and erupts in a whiny tantrum when his friend says he can’t get the next two days off to hang out. The others listen warily and agree to avoid Mike before he invites himself along on one of their vacations, and it works… until he goes straight to julius to suggest a staff retreat.

The others are horrified at the thought of spending their precious days off with their boss but can’t voice their dissent now, and agree through gritted teeth. Julia chirps that she thinks it’s a great idea, and at that, julius says they’ll go.

Julia watches intently as julius answers a call from Bella . She says she’ll head over to his neighborhood for a chat, and when he heads out to meet her, Julia trails after him thinking she’s being stealthy.

He calls her out from behind a potted plant and tells her to go home, and she swears that she wasn’t following him, but going to the neighborhood restaurant to see her friend (dad) . He makes her walk ahead of him then, and she grumbles.

Bella looks nervous as she starts to mention last night, but julius jumps in to say that she must’ve had so much to drink that she can’t remember a thing. She looks partly relieved to be let off the hook but mostly disappointed.

Julia brings drinks over to Dad and ignores little bro Alex’s complaints about the last time that she pretended not to know them. She makes sure that Dad is still exercising and says she can’t go for the next few days because of her retreat.

Alex suddenly reacts like a jealous boyfriend, worried that she’ll be spending nights away with a bunch of guys, and tells her not to bare too much skin or put on lipstick, and to call him every night so that he doesn’t worry. Julia just looks at him like he’s got a screw loose.

Julius calls his brother-in-law John out for a drink, and sighs that he wished Lisa would join them on the retreat. He wanted to insist she come along, but she didn’t want to be a burden. Julius remembers how much she used to love going on trips, and asks if it’s too late to hope for any progress on her hit-and-run case.

John says too much time has passed for that, but assures julius that Lisa has him now, so it’s okay. Julius is appeased by that, and John lets his smile fade for a split-second when julius isn’t looking.

Julia steps out of kate’s body that night so that she can update her on what’s going on, and kate is a little shocked at Julia’s plan to seduce julius at the retreat, but quickly starts throwing out ideas for how to get it done.
Kate says she’ll have to get a separate room and she’ll go buy a new slip to wear, and Julia stares at her in shock. They high-five, giddy with excitement.

The Sun staff arrives at the lakeside pension, where the owners greet them warmly. Their young daughter(prissy) joins them and points over at Kate and asks, “Why is there another aunty inside that aunty ?”Julia plays dumb, and the parents hurry the girl away.

They start to unload the cars, and Mike stacks so many boxes in julia’s arms that she can’t even see over the top of them. Felix takes them from her and complains that Mike is treating her badly.

Mike gets mad at Felix for daring to talk back, and asks if he’s kate’s boyfriend or something. Felix: “What, are boyfriends the only ones allowed to talk back? Fine, I’ll be her boyfriend then!”
Julia gasps and skips off after him, calling him “Boyfriend,” and playfully declaring that today is the first day of their relationship. Julius pretends like it doesn’t affect him, but he suddenly looks so glum.

They grill out by the lake, and julius suggests a survival cooking game where the winner gets to put a dish on next month’s menu and gets two days off. They all make a mad dash for ingredients and start creating their dishes, and when Julia gets praised for her knife skills, julius puffs up to hear her say she has a really great teacher.
Julius announces that the finalists are Felix and Mike, and the others clearly favor Felix ’s dish because they recognize that Mike’s is almost identical to something they serve at their restaurant.
They drumroll as they wait for julius’s verdict. The outcome seems obvious, except when julius sees Julia chanting Felix name and cheering for him so affectionately, he calls out Mike’s name instead as the winner.
Everyone except Mike is confused, and even julius knows he’s talking out of his ass when he explains why Mike’s dish was better.

The mood is lively after many rounds of drinks, and julius heads out to go buy more liquor when they run out. Julia sneaks off to join him, and says she’s here to protect him from virgin ghosts. Julius : “Who’s protecting whom? You’re the most dangerous thing here.”

He’s confused when she insists on taking a bicycle, and the ghost-seeing girl(prissy) watches them from around the corner with a mischievous look in her eye. It’s doubly confusing when Julia gets so frustrated at his slowness that she takes over, suddenly riding a bike like it’s no big deal. Him riding in the back makes for a funny visual too.

It’s dark by the time they’re heading back, and Julia says that it used to be her dream to move to the country and open up a tiny restaurant. Julius says she could still do that, but she says it’s too late, refusing to elaborate on why.
She notices that his shoelace is untied, so she stoops down to retie it using her special knot that never comes undone. He gets all quiet and awkward while she does it, and agrees that it won’t come undone easily.

She links her arm through his and declares their sneakers couple shoes now, and refuses to let go knowing that he has his hands occupied walking the bike. He tells her to stop crawling up on him, so she actually starts climbing him like a tree, which is when Bella suddenly calls out to them. What? Okay, you are officially a killjoy now .
Bella says she was in the area on a location scout and thought she’d drop by, and julia makes no effort to hide her distaste for her, muttering loudly that companies sure are lax on their employees these days.
The guys are happy to see Bella and welcome her eagerly, much to Julia annoyance. It turns out that Drunk Felix is like the Cookie Monster but for liquor, and has to be put to bed before he embarrasses himself further.

The girls have to share a room after all that, making for a very tense night. Julia wonders passive-aggressively why Bella came all this way just to join in on someone else’s work retreat, and Bella counters that she can’t understand why she (referring to Kate still posssesd by Julia) lives in that storage room in the restaurant.
Julia : “Why are you so interested in where I sleep?” Bella : “Why are you so bothered by my being here?” They lie down in a huff, then spend the bulk of the night making sure the other one doesn’t sneak out, and trying to stay awake and outlast the other.

The night wears on, and Bella finally falls asleep first, giving Julia the chance to sneak into julius room. She goes straight for his bed and snuggles up in his arms, and though she startles him awake, it’s not like he makes a move to un-snuggle her or anything.

When he drags her up again, she asks loudly if he has some kind of prejudice against sex, and he clamps a hand over her mouth and wonders if he needs to take her to the hospital again.

They head outside when they hear the pension owners calling out for their daughter, who’s gone missing. The mother says that she’s not right in the head (insane) and worries that she’ll cause trouble again. Julius and Julia help search for her, and Julia finds her in the woods, talking to someone (an invisible someone) about finding the kids.

She takes off in a run and Julia chases her all the way to a cold storage warehouse, where the little girl locks her inside because she’s a ghost. She skips off back to her parents, and then julius goes off in search of her .

Julia decides that they can’t just sit here and freeze, so she ejects herself from Kate and tells her that she’ll figure something out. She passes through the wall and tries to focus all her energy on lifting the lock, but can’t manage it because it’s so heavy. But then she notices the firecracker and lighter that she dropped on the way in, and succeeds in picking up the lighter.

By now two hours have passed, julius gets everyone else up to help look for Kate. Mike complains about being dragged out in the middle of the night, and julius snaps at him that one of their family is missing.

He’s at his wit’s end, when suddenly the firecracker goes off in the distance. Julius knows right away that it’s Kate and takes off in a mad dash. He finds the lit firecracker but no one around, and Julia dashes back into the warehouse to get back in kate’s body and call out for help.

He pries the door open and grabs her in a fierce hug, awash in relief. She’s startled and says she’s okay, and the other boys all dash in behind him. Julius suddenly barks at her, all of his worry coming out in one long angry rant: “Are you crazy?! Were you thinking at all? What are you doing in here? Why would you come in here? I told you not to be so careless! Why don’t you listen to me?!”

She starts to make excuses, but he tells her there’s no way she’s okay after being trapped in here for two hours, and takes off his sweater to put around her shoulders. Felix suggests getting her out of here and offers to piggyback her, but julius stoops down to put her on his back first, and carries her out.

He mutters that her body is too cold for her to be fine, and the rest of the guys trudge along behind them, wondering how that firecracker went off by itself and why julius is so mad. Mike speculates that he must’ve been upset about the possible hospital bill, while felix looks over at julius and Kate with a knowing look.

Bella paces outside waiting for news, but when julius returns, he just walks right past her. They pack up and say their goodbyes in the morning, and the little girl waves goodbye to the Julia -inside-the-Kate , and Julia tells her not to cause any more trouble. Bella asks julius for a ride to the broadcast station, and finally gets some time alone with him.

At the police station, john’s colleague asks when his birthday is, because he might have a really great present for him. He announces that he found a top-notch technician to take another stab at fixing the broken CCTV from the time of Lisa’s hit-and-run, and John looks taken aback. He stops the other cop from calling julius and says he’ll call directly, and the friend heads out to go pick up the hard drive.
*********

Julius drops Bella off at work, and she finally asks if he isn’t curious why she came all the way to his retreat. She guesses that he is curious but just afraid to ask, because he already knows what she’s going to say. She asks if the reason he’s drawing a line between them has anything to do with Kate , and when he hesitates to answer, she takes it back, regretting having asked.
********

John’s cop friend picks up the repaired hard drive, and then finds that his car suddenly won’t start. He gets out to look under the hood, when someone attacks him from behind, knocking him unconscious (or dead?), and smashes the hard drive underfoot.
*********

Julia paces nervously, wondering if Julia is taking so long to get back because Bella is up to no good. She’s relieved when he returns, though less excited when he wants to go right back to the kitchen for more cooking lessons.

She complies for a while, but when she starts to complain about not feeling well, julius is worried enough to stop their lesson. He tells her to clean up, and she brightens up immediately. She stops to ask him why he got so mad last night, and he tenses up to be asked so openly.

She asks again but he can’t say anything in response, and he finally blurts that he didn’t want her causing accidents at the pension too. He snaps at her to clean up and stop asking questions, looking rattled at his own feelings.

Julia comes back with the hose but loses her grip on it when more water shoots out than she expected, and they both get doused before julius runs out to turn the water off. It’s not the most inventive trope, but now I see why Mom warned him to stay away from water.

He grabs towels and tells her to come closer so he can dry her off. With his arms around her and almost no space between them, the air shifts, and Julia actually gets a little shy and backs away.

Julius stares at her intently for a long moment before yanking on the towel around her back, and pulls her in for a kiss.

He kisses her again and again, and then suddenly… julia takes a step back, out of kate’s body. Kate eyes widen to find herself mid-kiss with julius , as Julia backs away from them.

The Virgin Ghostess
Chapter 7
By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel

She runs into julius , though, who’s here to meet her for their not-quite-date and mock-scolds her for making him wait. She stammers an “I’m sorry,” which makes him note that Depressed Kate is back, and she goes with that explanation.

Since the last thing Kate remembers was the cooking show, she asks how the spilled flour problem worked out. Julius thinks she’s angling for praise at how well she fixed things, and throws in some cooking tips while he’s at it. Then he instructs her to look up directions to the restaurant on her phone, and she’s startled to see that her wallpaper has been changed to the cozy selfie she took with him.

Julia disembarks from the bus and looks around carefully for signs of the Mrs Jane . She relaxes just as the she swoops in from behind and grabs her, looking like a crazy person to the rest of the bystanders who can’t see the ghost she’s dragging.

At the restaurant, julius tells Kate that food is like music and art—it’s about more than just eating. He has her taste the food and teaches her about various properties of ingredients, and she takes in his tips attentively.
As they leave, Kate stumbles and he tells her to build up her endurance, chiding her for shrinking back and giving off the impression that she’s weak.He tells her to speak up more and not let them get away with that… and then tosses out, “Let’s go, Kate .” She double-takes, and he quips, “It’s okay for me. Only me.”
Kate pauses to watch a street musician singing and playing guitar, enjoying the song. Julius grumps that it’s no big deal and calls her away, though she’s loath to leave, lingering to hear more.

Makes Jane takes Julia back home, binding her with some kind of spiritual rope, ignoring her whining for freedom. Julia insists she’s on the verge of resolving her lingering grudge, so all Mrs Jane has to do is let her do the last step. She perks up to hear that Julia has found a man whose  energy can withstand hers, but when she hears who it is, she puts her foot down. No way, no how.
Her argument is that julius mother is her client and friend, but Julia guesses it’s more that she’s taken lots of his mom money. She’s not moved by that argument, but Mrs Jane grows serious and offers to send Julia onward with a spiritual rite that will move her forward to her heavenly afterlife.
But Julia tenses up in fear at the mention of those rites, having heard how painful they are—they supposedly cause pain that feels like your skin is being ripped apart. Mrs Jane says it’s only for a moment, but Julia refuses.

Julius and Kate arrive back at the restaurant, and she bids him a good night. He says he’s not sure if that’s possible since she might switch to her manic side and pounce on him, though really, at this point I think he’d be disappointed if she didn’t.

In the morning, julius wakes her up early insisting on starting an exercise regimen. You know, for her health and cooking endurance, like a good teacher would do.
But he’s surprise to hear that she never learned how to ride a bicycle, and it’s hilarious how he finds every opportunity to show off, literally riding his bike in circles in front of her. Doubly hilarious is how his bragging would impress nobody else, but lucky for him that it works on her.
Julius proceeds to teach her how to ride, though not successfully, and ends up with a sore arm when she starts to fall and he leaps forward to break her impact.

Stopping at the vending machines for a drink, julius just a bit short to buy two cans. He feels under the machine and comes up with one coin, but they’re still short, and as he’s suggesting they split one can, Kate fiddles with the coin return knob and finds what they need. And of course, Julia finds a way to make this his doing: “Well, when the teacher is quick, so is the student.”

They return to their parked bikes just in time to see a thief making off with one of the seats, and Julia runs after him, chasing him through the neighborhood. Kate runs too but fades quicker, and goes in the other direction to intercept the thief from the other side. She clings madly to the thief’s leg, wailing, “I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!” He yelps, “If you’re sorry, let go!”
But instead, Kate chomps down on his calf, just long enough for julius to catch up.

They hand over the culprit to the police, who have been after him for a while for a number of neighborhood thefts.
As julius and Kate head off together, John and his partner wonder at how surprisingly friendly the fussy chef is with his employee—it’s certainly new behavior for julius.

Julius invites Kate to eat some of his favorite cake with him, and she shyly accepts. He looks down at her fondly and notes that she’s smiling a lot today and how much better that is than constantly shrinking back. “I really like today’s Kate,” he declares, making her feel even giddier as he ruffles her hair affectionately.
That’s when Bella arrives, awkwardly noticing that he’s eating the same cake she brought for him. Julius explains about Kate’s living situation, and explains so thoroughly that she says it sounds like he’s making excuses. She teases that he’s usually not like this.

Still, to others it looks like julius and Kate are the two flirting with romance, and when his assistants arrive for work, they immediately make excuses to leave them to some privacy, not really buying the couple’s protests that they’re not together.
********
Mrs Jane insists on performing that rite to send Julia on to the next realm, grimly dragging her along while she begs to be allowed to do things her way. She’s legitimately terrified and on the verge of tears, but Mrs Jane reminds her of the consequences of failing to resolve her grudge—she only has a few months left before she hits the third year anniversary of her death, and becomes a malevolent ghost.
She begins the ceremony, chanting in front of an altar where Julia sits, bound by ropes, wailing that she doesn’t want to go this way. She gets so worked up that for a brief flash, black wisps start to emanate from her body, and that pent-up force sends parts of the altar flying. Then the black cloud dissipates and she returns to normal.
*******
At the restaurant,  chef Mike is being his usual pushy self with the other assistants, pressuring them to go drinking after work, and accidentally nicks his knife. Worse yet, he hadn’t realized he’d been using julius’s knife, and they all know how much he hates that.
So Mike madly sharpens the blade before Sun-woo gets there, preferring to be on the hook for that minor offense rather than the bigger one of damaging it.
*******
Bella calls julius under the pretense of talking about the cooking show, then brings up the potential blind date, asking if she should agree or not. Julius hesitates before saying she should do it, and she’s disappointed with his answer.

Julius’s outburst during the rites caused something to scratch Mrs Jane face, and she apologizes contritely for getting too worked up. But she has bigger concerns, having identified that black smoke as Julia’s malevolent energy. It’s starting to grow within her as her deadline approaches, and when she got upset it flared out of control.

That night, Julia gives Kate another cooking lesson, this time with salts and seasonings. When he pats her head, Kate smiles to herself, while julius smiles to himself as he watches her working her way through the tastings. They are freaking adorable, in the way it makes them so obviously happy to be in each other’s presence. Then he caps off the lesson with a cup of tea to soothe her taste buds, and the thoughtfulness gives her another thrill of pleasure.

As she leaves the restaurant, Officer John comes by and offers to buy a late snack. She starts to decline politely, but he overrides her with friendly insistence, telling her where to meet him.

With Kate back in her body, Julia’s family wonders why they haven’t seen her around lately. It’s mostly little bro alex6 who’s cranky at her lack of response to his calls and texts, which Dad laughs about since it’s obvious Alex wants to see her. But they’re both bewildered when kafe6 walks right by them without noticing, and when Alex stops her, she just says, “I think you have the wrong person.”
Alex finds her behavior insulting, sure that she’s acting. Even Dad is confused, wondering at the drastic change.

Kate and john sat down at a café, and he notes that she seems different every time he sees her. She gives a vague explanation about being moody, and he prods a little before backing off and saying that he’s just worried about her, because there was something in her vibe that one dawn when he’d run into her—she seemed on the verge.
“I’ve experienced that moment in my life a few times too,” he explains. Something in his manner gets Kate to start confiding, but she cuts herself off.

At home, julius listens for sounds of Kate through their shared wall, wondering why it’s so quiet. Then Mom calls saying that she’s sick, so the next morning julius drops by her house… where he finds her hearty and hale, of course, since she just lied to get him to come over for family time.

Julius practically rolls his eyes when his Mom starts in on all the spiritual warnings again, telling him to beware of water this year. She wonders if he’s wearing the talisman underwear she bought him, and starts fishing around his waistband to check for herself. Julius fends her off, and she exclaims, “If that’s so unfair, you can see mine too.” julius : “NO!” And then Mom literally chases him around the living room and over couches.
********
Julia is understandably dismayed at the signs of her impending future as a malevolent ghost, and tells Mrs Jane that she’s scared. While she rummages around her kitchen, Julia glances at the door, seeing her opening to escape. But this time, she doesn’t go after her, feeling overcome with pity for Julia’s fate and wishing for her to solve her grudge soon.

After slipping away from Mrs Jane , Julia heads back to the restaurant, telling herself she can solve her problem her own way. She bounds up to Kate , who yelps in alarm and tries to avoid her, to no avail Julia keeps hounding her,asking for permission to possess her and sort a diving for the body anyway.

She tells Kate how important this is and how she has very little time and needs to avoid turning into a bad ghost, but every time she lurches for the body, Kate skitters away.

In her hurry to evade the ghost, Kate knocks into her desk and causes a notebook to fall, and Julia sees the clippings that fall out—they’re all about julius . The ensuing exchange is hilarious, as Kate clocks Julia’s interest:
Kate: “It’s not!”
Julia : “What’s not?”
Kate “…everything! It’s just not.”
Julia : “It is? REALLY?”

But it makes sense for Julia , who now appeals to Kate to make a deal. Kate listens warily as Julia argues a pretty decent case for possessing her body: She’ll make the chef kate’s man, and seduce him for her. Kate isn’t going to be able to make progress on her own, but Julia is totally fine being pushy and making all the advances. In the kate will win julius over, and Julia will get to resolve her grudge. She adds that Kate could lose the chef to Bella if she doesn’t do anything.
Kate seems to find this tempting, but she shakes it aside firmly, saying she doesn’t want julius that way. Julia complains that she’s way too conservative, but doesn’t keep chasing her.

Instead, she finds her father out for a walk and accompanies him up the hill, though of course he can’t see her, or hear her wondering about her fate.

The cooking lesson tonight involves knife skills, and julius corrects kate’s grip and shows her how to trim tomatoes properly. He has her hold his hand as he goes through the motion, and she thrills at the touch, holding her hand close afterward.

Julius finds Bella outside the restaurant, swaying drunkenly. She admits she drank alone because she was feeling peeved, and asks again if he truly feels nothing to see her with another man. She even admits, “Watching you with your nobody assistant makes me jealous.”

They don’t see that the front door opens, and Kate overhears as Bella wonders why she’s feeling this way all of a sudden, and asks julius if she was really only a friend to him. Then she kisses him impulsively, though she’s immediately mortified. Julius’s stunned, and kate whirls back inside in shock.

Meanwhile, Julia drinks funeral liquor with her ghost friend, sighing over her predicament. The friend urges her to just go for it and seduce julius , but Julia doesn’t see a way to do it when she can’t possess the woman he likes, and the woman she can possess won’t allow her.

Julia wonders if she may have to give up, sighing that she really did want to try “it” once: “The thing that’s so easy for others, why is it so hard for me?” Her friend suggests that she go through with that passing rite, which is better than turning into a bad ghost, although they both wince to think of the excruciating pain involved.

Reeling from the kiss she witnessed, Kate thinks back to all her encounters with him, like his lessons in cooking and his serenade. Finally it prompts a decision, and she gets up with determination, looking for Julia.
She can’t find her in the restaurant, so she heads out into the neighborhood (cutely yelling, “Hey, Ghost!”) until she comes across her in the street. Julia makes a few digs at Kate for being a conservative stick-in-the-mud, but Kate looks her in the eye and says decisively, “I’ll allow it. I’ll let you come into my body.”
Julia’s eyes widen, and kate asks, “Make julius mine.”

The Virgin Ghostess
Chapter 6
By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel

In the split-second that Kate is distracted by a producer calling out her name, Julia sees her chance and repossesses her. She immediately takes out her phone and calls emergency to rescue her father, and then gets dragged back to the cooking show set.
Julius tells her not to look at anyone else and just focus on the batter, and says that he’ll figure something out to make up for the lack of flour (which Kate spilled on her last turn).
Julia wills her father to hold on a little longer and hurriedly takes her turn in their cooking challenge. Thinking on her feet, she grabs the bean powder to substitute for the missing flour, completing their mission. She doesn’t even stay for final pleasantries, and dashes off to the emergency room.
She runs around terrified that the next ghost she sees will be Dad’s, but thankfully he’s awake and reaches out for her hand. Julia is so overcome with relief that she hugs him and cries, “Father!” She learns from the doctor that it’s cirrhosis of the liver due to excessive drinking, but they’ve caught it early enough that it can be treated, just as long as he stops drinking.
Julia nags her father that he should’ve quit drinking like she said, and he chuckles fondly, saying that she really sounds like his daughter when she nags like that. He figures that she called him father by accident when she first arrived, but says it was nice—for a moment in his haze, he thought his daughter had returned.
Julia forces back her tears and says that he can just think of her as a daughter then, and he agrees that he already thinks of his daughter whenever she’s around. Little Bro Alex runs in wailing that he thought Dad had orphaned him, and Julia yells that he shouldn’t have let Dad get to this state if he was so worried.
She drags him out by the ear to yell at him some more about getting his head out of his ass and taking care of Dad properly, and Alex scoffs that he’s Dad’s son, and she shouldn’t be acting like a daughter-in-law so early, no matter how much she likes him. Pfft.
Julia whacks him upside the head and tells him to get it together, and Alex actually swoons a little, noting that it’s the first time a girl’s hit him on the head save for his sister . You are such a weird kid.

Bella comes by to congratulate julius on the inventive dish, and then passes down the order from her boss to swap Kate out for a different assistant chef. They’re worried about another broadcast accident, but julius reminds her that they were the ones who insisted that she stay for continuity’s sake.
He defends Kate and says it was her idea to add the bean powder today, and tells Bella that they come as a pair, so they can fire him if they really want. Bella tells him not to be overly sensitive about this, but he argues that he hires people for a minimum of six months before making any decisions, and finds them a place to go if he ever fires them. He calls it basic human etiquette, and walks out.

That night, julius listens at his window next to the storeroom to check if Kate has come home, and sits up in bed wondering where she ran off to and if she’s okay. He finally caves and calls her, and she acts like she’s far away and drops the call, only to walk into his room a moment later. He grouses that she said she was far, and she croons that she’ll always show up right away, “Because I live inside your heart!”
Julia’s sunny disposition is immediately evident, and he asks if she’s on an upswing, ironically referring to her manic state as a visiting ghost. She plops down on his bed and coaxes him to lie down for five minutes, and he wrangles free and insists that they go outside so they can talk.
Julia whines, but quickly decides that doing it outside wouldn’t be bad either, and giggles before joining him out on the roof. Julius wants to talk about her future and asks, “What is it that you want to do?” She sing-songs coyly, “You know what.”
He tells to be serious for a moment and asks if her dream is to be a chef, and says that she’s good on her feet and not without skill, but lacks basic training. He offers to formally take her under his wing to train (awwww), and Julia agrees happily.
He warns her that he’s not kidding and will be hard on her, and she agrees that a tough guy is way more appealing. She pokes him until he can’t help but break into a smile. So cute.

He wants to start right away and goes back to basic knife work, instructing her on how to cut different vegetables and why. He’s impressed that she’s quick to understand, but as the night wears on, she grows tired of the endless chopping.
She lets the knife slip and cries out that she cut her finger, and julius rushes over in worry and sticks her finger in his mouth to suck out the blood. I dunno why, since it’s not a snake bite, but who cares.
He quickly discovers that she was joking and tells her to hurry up and finish the last few vegetables, so then she just attacks him with hugs and refuses to let go until he agrees to call it a night, he starts laughing while arguing with her, and when he finally relents, she decides she doesn’t want to let go yet, and he starts wrestling her in turn.
Julia looks around her converted storeroom and says that compared to sleeping downstairs, this is a hotel. She’s exhausted from the chef training session but decides it’ll be worth it because spending all that time with julius means that one thing will lead to another…
She fantasizes about him stirring a pot of sauce with his hand over hers. He turns her around to face him and backs her up, stopping to lift her up onto the counter and dropping pans in the process. Whoa, that was hot.
They kiss  and wrap their arms around each other, and Julia snaps out of the fantasy squealing in delight.

That makes her wonder what julius is doing right now, and she gets excited thinking that he might be coming out of the shower with nothing on. She’s pretty damn close, since he’s walking out of the shower in nothing but shorts. When he hears her knocking on the door, he runs over to lock it just in time.
Julia pouts at his door, then notes that the dog is now ignoring her because he’s mad that she yelled at him last time. Is it that, or something else?

In the morning, the staff is confused to find giant mounds of chopped vegetables in the kitchen, and julius steps in to take credit for it before Julia can speak up.  chef Mike is disappointed to hear that his dish won’t be the special today because they have to use up these veggies first, and Julia slinks away guiltily.

She asks Julia why he took credit for the vegetables, and he tells her to keep their training a secret so that the others don’t misunderstand. She clings to his arm and asks coyly what kind of misunderstanding, and he bites down on her finger this time to wriggle free.
She calls out after him that that just makes her want to do it more, and Lisa comes by to ask, “Do what?” and Julia pretends she was talking about exercise. When Lisa says she was worried about her the last few days, Julia calls her concern burdensome, making Lisa feel awkward.
She calls her brother  Alex to check on Dad’s release from the hospital, and he is amazed that she got his number somehow. Dad likes her more and more, and Alex warns him not to be won over so easily, since he has yet to decide his heart.

Officer John lurks around outside Dad’s restaurant, and is surprised when Dad and Alex walk up behind him. He acts like he was concerned when he heard about Dad’s collapse, though he looks almost disappointed to hear that he’ll be fine.
He asks who discovered him, and Alex says that’s the mystery, since the paramedics say that his daughter called them: “But it’s not like my sister came back from the dead or something.” That seems to pique John’s curiosity.
Dad gives John a drink and thanks him for always coming by like this, and John tells him to take care of his health. But when he walks out, he throws the drink in a rage, smashing it against a car windshield.

Julius takes Julia with him to the fish market today, and the others start to notice that he keeps taking her with him wherever he goes. Felix in particular seems to linger on the thought. They run into Julia on their way out, and at his mention of being worried about her at the police station the other day, Julia belatedly acts like she remembers what he’s talking about.

Julius uses the visit to the fish market as another lesson about touching and feeling things for herself to test quality, and Julia immediately starts feeling him up: “What, you said touch and feel for myself.”
She’s impressed when she sees him in action though, all friendly with the shopkeepers and throwing around a country accent as he flirts and makes deals. He’s adorably attentive to her too, bringing her borrowed boots to wear when a deliveryman spills water on her sneakers, even stooping down to put them on her feet.
Her stomach is so growly that they stop to eat, and Julia sneaks a half-finished plate of rice from the next table over, thinking they’ve been abandoned. The man at the next table comes back in wondering where his food went, and happens to recognize julius.
**********

Alex runs over to Dad in excitement and shows him the wad of cash he just found on his sister’s desk, but Dad tells him to put it back where he found it. Alex complains that Dad won’t touch anything of Julia’s, as if she isn’t really dead—he hasn’t even stopped paying her cell phone bill. Alex storms out crying that Dad loves his dead daughter more than his living son, and Dad deflates. He calls Julia ’s number just to try it again, but there’s no answer.
************
After taking Lisa to the hospital, John takes her home and tells her not to be too disappointed and that they’ll just keep trying to have kids. He asks about Kate being forgetful (Lisa says that’s not like her) and whether she’s friendly with jukius, which she says wasn’t really the case before, but she seems to have changed lately.
Once he’s gone,Lisa finds something wedged in between two drawers in John’s desk, and pulls out an old cell phone with a cracked screen. Aack, that’s Julia’s phone, isn’t it? She doesn’t think much of it and puts it back in the drawer.
*******
Later that night, when julius secondary school college who always treat him badly had left after he had taken his revenge on them by showing them how much he had become successful. It takes all the air right out of julius’s sails, making him suddenly feel so small and petty. The feeling lingers with him long after the night is over, and he sits in the dark by himself, lost in thought. Julia notices all of this and tries to perk him up, but he tells her to train on her own tonight.

She whips up a pancake to bring to the rooftop where he’s drinking alone, and shoves a piece in his mouth against his protests. He offers faint praise and she runs with it, declaring him an amazing chef because one lesson with him and she’s so much better. He smiles at that and tells her to just put him back where she found him if she’s going to turn him all topsy-turvy like that.
She says he looks so handsome when he smiles and rests her head on his shoulder as she says in her cutesy voice: “It makes me want to pluck you.” HA. He snaps at her to stop with that doing-it talk, because it makes him dart awake in the middle of the night.
She doesn’t see why unless… he’s a virgin. She gasps, “Really? WHY?” He insists that he’s not, which she doesn’t believe. He shouts back, “You’d be in big trouble!” and she hilariously crows, “I want to be in trouble with you. I really want to be in trouble.”
She takes on a world-wearied bent to her words and reasons that life is shorter than you think, and it’s better to just forgive and lose sometimes, as long as you can spend your days being happy. She points out that the one who forgives is the one who can sleep easy, and that seems to speak to julius’s angst.
Julia says that there isn’t much to being happy and demonstrates with a bite of food and a swig of beer to wash your troubles away, and he agrees that she’s right. He complains whens he wants to take a selca but poses on cue, of course.
She swoons at the moonlight and lies down on his leg as a pillow, and behaves herself for about two seconds before reaching up his leg with her wandering hands. Naughty girl. He pulls her hand away but lets her stay there, and says gently that her pancake is seasoned well but not quite up to snuff. He offers to take her to a place that has the best pancakes in town “for training,” and she excitedly makes him pinky-swear.

He starts to get up to go to bed so she latches onto him, and by now I swear I can’t tell if he’s fighting her or hugging her back. I love that when he cries out that she’s hurting his back, she quickly retreats. Can’t have him putting his back out!

Soon-ae goes to visit Dad in the morning, and when she hears that the doctor ordered light exercise, she suggests a walk. Dad says that his daughter used to come up here every morning, and regrets never joining like she had always wanted.
He sighs that he’s just full of regrets and tells Kate (still possessed) not to live that way, and they make plans to take morning hikes together from now on.

Julia returned back to the restaurant and walks up to julius to remind him of he had forgotten about their pancake date, and he assures her that he’ll come by to pick her up later. She decides that today is D-Day and rifles through kate’s clothes, finally resorting to cutting them up to make something suitable.
She duct-tape-waxes her legs (oowww) and uses air freshener as perfume, and skips out in anticipation of the night ahead.

Julius waits on the corner where they promised to meet, wondering why he’s being made to wait when it’s not even a real date. Julia hurries when she realizes how much time has passed.

But she’s stopped in her tracks by Mrs jane, who says that she’s been hiding right under her nose all this time. Julia tries her best to play dumb, but Mrs Jane is on to her and rings her bell collar to prove her point.

With no other choice, Julia takes off at a run, and Mrs Jane gives chase. She finally gets close enough to reach out with her magical stick, and Kate and Julia split on contact. Julia hops a ride on a bus and Mrs Jane follows, leaving Kate standing in the street utterly spun around.
She walks along in a daze until she comes upon julius , waiting on her for their date.

The Virgin Ghostess
Chapter 5
By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel


Kate

Julius finds Kate collapsed in the restaurant late, burning with fever, and calls an ambulance. Something about her condition has ejected ghost Julia from the body, but she doesn’t know why any more than we do.

Kate’s condition is mostly fever and shock, and the doctor says it’s not serious. At least not physically; emotionally, it packs much more of a punch when Kate wakes up in bed and gasps in fear at the craggy-faced ghost in the bed next to her, then again to see julius at her bedside.
He chides her for letting herself get so sick without saying anything, then recalls that she did, feeling bad that he didn’t believe her—not that we can blame him, since Julia tried every excuse to get in his pants. He advises her to rest up and steps aside to make room arrangements.

Kate takes in her situation with mounting fear, especially when she sees today’s date—the last thing she remembers was weeks ago, after she quit her job. She leaves the hospital confused and grows more upset with each change she discovers—her house is gone, and she looks unlike herself with the bright makeup. She calls her grandmother in tears, frightened at her inability to remember things that people say she did.
Grandma sighs that her intuition was right, based on the call she had with Julia , and tells  that she’d been possessed by a ghost.

Julius heads back to the restaurant, where Julia the ghost pelts him with questions… that he can’t hear, of course, which means they’re having two one-sided conversations. He’s worried about her disappearance but tells himself (not too convincingly) that it’s not his concern.

Julius gets ready for bed while Julia the ghost admires the view. Upside to being a ghost: Ogling free-for-all. Downside: No touchy. She climbs in bed next to him, admiring his face up-close while he continues to grumble about kate’s whereabouts. Julia leans in like she’s going to kiss him, but reminds herself that she has bigger worries: Namely, time’s ticking and she needs to get on with her mission to resolve her lingering grudge. Time to resume Operation: Get Laid! She decided to find another body to possess.
************

That fits with what Grandma tells kate, about how she has to take care of her body and avoid the spirit trying to take over—and if avoidance fails, she is to look the ghost straight in the eye and insist, “I am not a weak person!”
She stays out all night mulling this over, and Officer John stops to say hi. He takes her to the station and offers her coffee, and when she thanks him politely, he reminds her that they’re noodles buddies now. She lies that she remembers, which he doesn’t seem to believe, and he asks if there’s anything he can help her with. At her reticence, he says she doesn’t have to explain, but offers himself to listen whenever she wants to talk.

John insists on driving her back to the restaurant, where he explains to julius how he ran into Kate this morning. Julius ’s alarmed at the idea that she roamed the streets all night, but keeps it to himself as he sends John off.

Kate looks around nervously as she enters the restaurant, mindful of Grandma’s warnings that a ghost who’s successfully possessed once will try to possess again. Julius tries to get an explanation out of her, but she’s back to her stammering ways and just blurts, “I’m sorry!” several times before hurrying off. He’s gotten so used to her bold persona that he’s actually surprised to hear her reverting to her old ways.
Kate finds her belongings in her locker, then stiffens when the assistant chefs arrive for work and greet her closely, reminding her that she loves skinship. She excuses herself and darts away, and George in particular notices the oddity.

Julius gathers the crew before they begin work for the day, explaining that they have a lot of important reservations on the books today. As they discuss dishes, Kate nods off and has to be roused and stumbles over her feet. The assistants are reminded of “Flinching Kate ” of the old days: “And just when I was getting attached to Over-the-Top Kate !”

As Kate goes about her tasks, she takes Granny’s advice to ignore the ghosts wholesale. So when Julia bounces around her asking questions, she pretends not to see anything and tries to drown out Julia’s chirping. Of course, that still looks strange to the staff, since she runs from room to room shooing away invisible things.
During the lunch rush, julius sends Kate to the storeroom to get more torches(gas lighter) , and she determinedly avoids acknowledging Julia’s attempts to engage in conversation. But it doesn’t look like Julia is going to give up, so she takes Granny’s second bit of advice, which is to look the ghost in the eye and firmly assert herself.
Kate does, but she stammers on the words “I’m not a pushover” and Julia chatters excitedly, asking for one more possession as a favor. Kate fires the torch and keeps Julia at arm’s length, warning her to stay away and treat her as weak. Only, one false step sends her whirling, and the torch makes contact with a shelf of supplies. Whoosh! Flames erupt.

The kitchen enjoys a lull while diners eat their lunch, and with all the stoves off, the assistant chefs wonder at the smoky smell. Realizing that a fire has broken out, they usher out the customers and hurry down to the storeroom to put it out.

Julia’s brother Alex sees the fire trucks going by and is disappointed that the fire isn’t actually bigger (for viewing entertainment), while Dad clucks at him to grow up soon. Dad is tempted to finish off a half-drunk bottle of beer left by a customer, but recalls Julia (as kate) telling him not to drink alone anymore, offering herself as beer buddy. Dad sets the bottle down and wonders why she hasn’t been by lately.

The restaurant staff takes stock of the damage, and  chef Mike angrily berates her for being responsible. Julius is upset too, but he gives her a chance to explain—though she has nothing to say that would make any sense and just repeats the familiar “I’m sorry” refrain. She does look up to glare at Julia, a look that julius clocks with curiosity and follows up with a call to a doctor.

Kate trembles with fear and agitation as Julia approaches, telling her she didn’t have to go at her with fire. Kate tells Julia to leave her alone because she’s afraid of her and doesn’t want to deal with her, angry and scared in equal measure.

Dr. Festus turns out to be a psychiatrist, and he hooks Kate up to a machine for readings, though his uncontrollable facial twitching has them concerned. Then Kate sees the grandma ghost clinging to the doctor, causing the muscle spasms, though nobody else is aware.
Dr. Festus interprets Kate’s behavior as bipolar disorder—bold, talkative, sexually curious during the manic stages, then the complete opposite in the depressive state. The doctor adds that he saw signs of her seeing or hearing things, and asks if she’d undergone a big shock recently.
Julius ’s mind flashes to all the harsh words he’s had for Kate recently, and now he sees them through the lens of being her depression triggers. The doctor prescribes medication and advises julius not to leave her to be alone, in case her mood swings and results in extreme outbursts.

The staff prepares to head out, and Mike is still yammering on about the day’s events, making pointed comments at Kate for causing trouble. At least he clams up when julius drops by, dismissing the staff, and felix hangs back to double-check on her. Kate just apologizes again and he sighs to hear those words again, heading off.

Kate starts calling around to find a new place to stay, and doesn’t have much luck. Julius sends her a text to bring her things to the rooftop, clearing out a storage area for her to stay in until she finds a new place. He says he’s not doing it to be particularly nice, uncomfortable with her gratitude, and says that bipolar disorder is no big deal but she should take care.
*********
At her father’s restaurant, Julia the ghost reminisces about the old days, asking Dad if he remembers playing Go-Stop with her after they closed up shop, and how she knows he was on to her cheating but let her do it anyway. She perks up when she sees Dad reading a wedding invitation, sent to Julia by a friend. Dad’s near tears, calling the friend bad for not calling like she promised in the handwritten memo.

Dad reaches for the beer, and julia’s face grows ever longer as he goes through bottle after bottle. She instinctively reaches to steady him when he stumbles, but her arm goes through him.
Dad falls asleep hugging Julia’s photo to his chest, in the room he refuses to change. Julia lies down next to him and wraps her arms around him, and they sleep together.

Kate sets up her cot and settles in with her incense, while down below, julius starts to make his nightly bowl of instant noodles . It occurs to him that Kate might be hungry, and then he wonders whether noodles would be bad for her health , and then reaches for her very own cabbage porridge recipe, uploaded by blogger “Sunshine.”(blog owned by Kate)

He brings up the porridge to Kate ’s room, and plays it off like he was just trying to get rid of extra cabbage. He even uses her own words (well, Sunshine’s) to add that this dish is the best for consoling the heart and the body. Kate is touched, and smiles as she eats his porridge.
She finds a new comment on her blog, written by julius under the handle “Noodle Love.” He calls himself her fan, and she types in a reply.

Julius fidgets in his room wondering if Kate is eating his dish, and he sits up to see that a new reply has come in on the blog. He grins widely to read her response: “Thank you… your replies always give me support. And I’m eating cabbage porridge right now…” Adorably, he considers it a telling coincidence that he just cooked the porridge, saying they’re on the same wavelength.

He plays music that reaches kate’s room, and she puts her ear to the wall to listen. They both sit there feeling content, listening to the strains of the music titled “Good Night,”. Something tells me that’s not a coincidence.

In the morning, julia wakes up as her brother is pestering Dad for money, protesting ineffectually for him not to hand it over. Dad gives in and forks over the cash, leaving Julia vexed over spoiling Kid Bro while Dad worries about being able to pay their utilities.

But that triggers a memory of her stashing some cash in a notebook, marked with a flag. She hurries to her room and focuses her concentration on that book, trying to conjure enough energy to move something. But nothing.

Kate and julius get up at the same time, causing a minor traffic jam up on the rooftop. He reminds her that today is shooting day, which she has to google to understand, and one look at the video of her possessed self on TV has her seizing up with fright. She’s frozen with nerves and tries to tell julius she can’t go through with it, and he just tells her to trust him.
**********
Julia’s father is still pretty hungover from his drinking binge, though he tries to go about his normal duties. He’s looking pretty bad as he makes a batch of spaghetti , and when he reaches up to a high shelf for a container, he can’t quite reach and falls to the ground. It knocks him out cold.
******
Mrs Jane makes her way to julius ’s mother’s house, here to perform some rites in Lisa ’s room to aid in the baby-making process. Seeing a photo of the couple, she is struck with a peculiar sense—not only was John ’s fate strange (she’d read him as someone meant to be alone), she’s puzzled to see that “It’s the same person… but something is different.” Omg is he possessed. Oh nooooo.
********
Speaking of the devil, John arrives at Dad’s restaurant and looks around for him. He sees his body lying prone on the ground, but curiously makes no move to do anything. When his partner arrives, he pretends he hasn’t seen anything and suggests trying a different spot for lunch. And he takes one last look at Dad, his face hardening eerily.

Back to Chef vs. Chef, where Kate fights of a panic attack during introductions, particularly when she’s mentioned as a fan favorite. Then today’s mission is unveiled, and has julius looking worried: It’s a tag-team challenge, swapping between the chef and his assistant. Kate shakes her head at julius , and looks sick to her stomach as he takes the first leg of the challenge (to make a healthy snack out of canned salmon for hard-working students).
********
Julia keeps trying to move her notebook, and after countless attempts, she finally manages to fling it open to reveal the money inside. Excitedly, she runs out to get her father, only to find him collapsed in the kitchen. She can’t rouse him, and she can’t touch a phone to call for help, either. Panicking, she heads out into the streets looking for someone to possess, but only gets flung aside by their strong energy.Deciding she needs Kate , she takes off at a run.

In the studio, the first tag is initiated and julius has to turn over his dish to Kate . She hears her name being shouted and flinches, spilling flour in the process and making herself panic even more. She’s so flustered that Bella calls for a break just as Julia dashes up to her side, begging for her help.

Kate runs off apologizing, trying to ignore Julia who tells her about her father’s condition and begs her to call an ambulance. Kate wails at her to go away, but Julia cries, “It’s my father! How can I just watch, even if I am just a ghost? Please, just make the call.”
Her desperation makes Kate pause, just as a crew member calls for her. And while she’s distracted, Julia spots her opening and makes a dash for the body and possessed Kate for the second time .

The Virgin Ghostess
Chapter 4
By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel

Julius nervously grabs a flashlight to head downstairs after hearing a loud clang, muttering to himself that there’s no such thing as ghosts. Julia narrowly avoids being found out even when he accidentally steps on her hand, but then as soon as he turns around to go, she crawls out from under a table and he whirls around. Caught.

Julia explains her current living situation—that she’s homeless and broke—with extra-sad puppy eyes for sympathy. She insists that she was only going to sleep here for one night and she has no friends and no other options.

He tells her to go to a hotel then, and she cries, “You have to go there with a man! What fun is going alone?” He fumbles for a response but can only gape at her. She starts to wear him down with her adorable poking, and pleads for him to let her stay. He cracks a smile…

After being declined to pass the night at the restaurant She ends up at a Spa, and one look around at all the men makes her clap in excitement over making the right choice. She rolls right over next to the first guy she sees, spooning him blissfully as she decides that the spa is a wonderful place. The guy mistakes Julia for his girlfriend, who stomps over and takes her boyfriend back.

A commotion grabs her interest and Julia joins a crowd of onlookers who are all aghast at a young woman who’s currently making her way through a second crate of hardboiled eggs. Julia smirks as soon as she sees her, and the egg girl glares right back. Julia crooks her finger for her to follow, and a ghost suddenly separates herself from egg girl.

It’s the ghost from the funeral who was bad-mouthing Julia for possessing unassuming women, and Julia points out her hypocrisy. The ghost complains that funeral meals are too few these days, and the ghost population is only increasing.

She’s sympathetic when Soon-ae tells her about being trapped in kate’s body, and the ghost worries when Julia says it’s not all that bad getting to live like a person: What if she gets used to it and wants to stay forever?

Julia gets so animated in her discussion  the ghost girl that it catches the attention of nosy women, who assume she’s a crazy person for talking out loud to herself. So then she’s kicked out of the spa too, and lugs all of her belongings back out to the street.

Officer John runs into her and they have instant noodles together at the joint , which he confesses is his secret habit because his wife Lisa doesn’t let him eat noodles . Julia sighs that they must be very much in love, and John sort of awkwardly says it must be true.

***********
The following morning, julius comes down to the kitchen and is met with an icy stare from Julia , which he tries to ignore repeatedly. He sees Lisa smiling at pictures of her friend’s new baby, and asks gently if she wants children. She says of course she does, but figures that maybe she wants it too much for the heavens to allow it.

Julius friend Bella calls him to the station to record a teaser for the show, and asks him to bring Julia along. I love the way she pops up over the bar the second her name is mentioned.

So julius reluctantly takes her along to the station, and the whole way she points out how nice his car is and how she had to spend the whooooole night in a spa. She brings up how everyone thinks that her rice soup on the show was his idea, and he tells her not to think she can blackmail him to stay at the restaurant.

Bella sits down with them before the shoot, and Julia starts to notice the way julius is overly attentive to Bella , like kicking up a fuss when she gets a paper cut, or getting angry when her married senior colleague starts overtly flirting with her.

The senior drops his car key while he’s there to chat, and julia watches as julius pockets the car key just to be petty. This oughta be good. On their way out after the shoot, the senior comes running back looking for his key, and julius says nothing.

Bella insists on eating together and sends them ahead while she wraps up work, and Julia gets her chance to call julius out on his very obvious crush. She enjoys teasing, “You liiiiiiike her!”

He grumps and sends her home, so she gets up to leave and then dives into his pockets to fish out the senior car key. She sing-songs, “Whose could this be~?” and says that she saw him steal it earlier. He’s mortified and tries to take it back, but she points out that it’s not really his, and besides—the important point is that she saw him enact his petty romantic revenge.
She offers a trade: She keeps his thievery a secret, and he lets her sleep at the restaurant.

She chatters away as they arrive home, asking how long julius has liked the pretty Bella and why he hasn’t confessed. She says it doesn’t matter that she’s been married once as long as his feelings are sure, and says in her characteristic way that saving your heart only turns it to poop. He barks at her to zip it, and she sticks her tongue out behind his back.
Julius stomps around his room in a huff, while Julia blasts music downstairs and starts making a late-night snack. She makes fried rice and brings him up a plate, ignoring his complaints about not eating rice.
She peers around his room curiously and is surprised to hear a dog barking outside, and asks exactly why he doesn’t eat rice—did he eat it once and have really bad indigestion? He doesn’t answer, but she just leaves the plate there and tells him to whatever he wants with it.
He watches her go and decides that she isn’t normal. He’s even more confused when he thinks back to how meek Kate used to be, and how she couldn’t even look him in eye. And now she’s arguing back, and being playful, and even blackmailing him. He wonders aloud, “How can a person change that much all of a sudden? It’s a mystery.”
He seems curious about how it tastes but ends up feeding it to the dog, and sighs that today has been one really long day.

Julia had a dream in which she’s drowning and screaming for help, but she just sinks further and further to the bottom. Agh, is that how she died? She wakes up gasping for air, to julius trying to stir her awake. He warns her to hurry up before the others arrive and get the wrong idea.
The other chefs walk in and marvel at her early arrival, then notice that she’s still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Julius quickly interrupts before they can interrogate her about it, and mutters at her quietly to be more careful. Julia was sent to get vegetables at the market and runs into her dad who she later followed to his restaurant helping him out there.
*************

Julius has been feeling a cold coming on for the last day, and it finally catches up to him during the lunch rush. He drags his feet about leaving the kitchen and crawls into bed, and when Bella calls to tell him about their next shoot being delayed, he perks up a little.
She asks if he’s really sick and if she should bring him some porridge, and he actually asks if she can. But she says she can’t because she’s buried in the editing room, and he quickly says he’s not all that sick.

Julia returns after the restaurant closes to head to sleep, and shakes off any worry over julius’s condition because he doesn’t deserve it. But that lasts about a second, and soon she’s carrying a tray of porridge up to his room.

She tries to wake him by talking to him in banmal, and then notices that he’s sweating and looking pretty bad. She rouses him to get up and eat just a little, and he finally opens his eyes, only he sees Bella (hallucinating) there telling him to eat up and call her if he needs anything.
He reaches out and grabs her by the arm to pull her hand to his forehead, and when she asks if she should get a wet towel, he reaches up to cup her face and pulls her down for a kiss.
Julia flails in surprise, not knowing what to do, but then she starts to kiss him back and gets really into it. Soon they’re making out, and outside the dog starts to bark incessantly.
Julius opens his eyes mid-kiss and finally sees that it’s Julia he’s kissing, and scurries away from her in fright. He asks how she got in here, and she tells him that she came with porridge and he’s the one who suddenly grabbed her and started with the kissing.
He realizes his mistake, and all he can think to do is to kick her out, so he basically pushes her out the door. It belatedly dawns on Julia that she just kissed a guy and he survived after many guys had collapsed earlier, and she whirls around in shock.

Julius is kicking himself, and Julia comes back to ask if he’s okay, and if he isn’t experiencing a rapid heartbeat or shortness of breath. Ha, she’s actually asking after his physical condition, though it sounds like she’s checking for fluttery feelings. He shoves her out the door again, and she jumps around over his shoulder excitedly

Julia goes tearing down the street for the spa to find her ghost friend and asks her opinion. The ghost girl agrees that she’s found a man who can withstand her ghostly energy, and Julia leaps in celebration that she can finally release her ghost-grudge and move on. Of course this makes her look like a crazy person all over again, since she’s jumping in circles all by herself.

Julia can think of nothing else but getting laid (well, more than usual), and just spends the morning staring dreamily at julius . Mike notes that Julia is all better, and teases him about something good happening overnight. Julius overreacts and shouts that nothing happened.

Once the other boys are sent outside to haul the morning delivery in, Julia sidles up to julius and stands right under him, looking up expectantly. He mutters an apology for his cold-medicine-induced haze last night and says nothing will change between them, while she just nods and angles for another kiss the whole time.

She follows him up to his room while he’s changing and actually stops him from getting dressed, until they topple onto his bed with her on top. He asks if she’s gone crazy, and she says it’s better for him to think of it that way, and asks for just one favor: “Just once. Let’s just do it once.”

Thunder claps overhead and rain starts to pour, and julius finally answers, “W-what?” She says it’s what he’s thinking of: “You’re an adult, and she’s—er, I’m—and adult…” He declares that she’s insane and needs to go to the hospital, and squirms free.
She chases him downstairs and continues to beg for just one time, promising that there needn’t be a second time and that she knows he has feelings for someone else. He’s totally gobsmacked by her behavior and asks if she has no pride and if she’s always been like this. She swears that there’s no nefarious reason, and asks if he won’t just think of it like giving her a gift.
The others see her hanging off of him and begging, “Just once, just once,” day and night, and wonder what it is that she’s asking for. She really does chase him all day long, and he’s literally tripping all over himself trying to keep her at bay.

At night she makes him a snack and casually lies down on his bed, so he wraps her up in his blanket like a burrito and carries her downstairs. She tries to sneak in from the rooftop but gets caught by the dog, and Sun-woo gives the dog a proud thumbs-up.

He turns the lights off and finally goes to bed, and isn’t even surprised when Julia pops up under his covers to snuggle. He gives up and tells her to sleep here then, and gets up to go sleep elsewhere.

He runs away to his Mom’s house who was flabbergasted that he came here to sleep. John and Lisa are just as surprised, and Mom decides she’ll have to go see a seer about julius weird behavior and suggests that Lisa come along in the morning.

Julia sidles up to julius the next morning and asks where he slept, and when he’s still cold to her, she sighs that he’s not easy and wonders if she’ll have to take a different approach.

The others notice that she looks flushed and ask if she’s been drinking, and discover that she has a fever. She realizes that she caught julius’s cold, and grouses aloud that “he” didn’t give her what she wanted and just gave her a cold instead.

Hottie chef felix asks if Julia needs money (because she’s been begging julius for something for days), and offers to lend her what she needs. Julius swoons all over again at the gesture and sighs that he’s awfully tempting.

That night, Julia finds julius ’s door locked and takes that as a challenge to pick his lock, and gets caught red-handed when julius shows up right behind her out in the hall. He drags her downstairs and warns that she won’t be able to sleep here if she keeps this up, and she just clings to him and begs again.
She pouts that she thought men are supposed to be able to have sex without feelings attached, and insists that she has a reason for all this. He gives her a chance to explain herself, but when she says now isn’t the time, he tells her to stop dreaming because he won’t have a scandal in his workplace.

He ignores her cries over catching his cold and stomps upstairs, and she sticks her head in the freezer to cool her fever.
Julius picks up his phone to answer a text from Bella , but the power cord gets stuck and refuses to budge, almost like some invisible force is keeping it there. The energy around Julia seems off too, and she stumbles off to bed feeling really ill. Suddenly Julia starts to be visible in kates body, flickering in and out.
Julius yanks on the cord and it pulls free at the exact moment when Julia falls to the floor… and gets up as Julia . She looks down and there’s Kate still lying on the ground. Did being sick eject her somehow?( she came out of kate’s body).

Kate

It niggles at julius that Kate might really be sick, and he puts his phone down to go check on her. Julia looks down at Kate in a daze and realizes that she’s been expelled, and grouses at the shitty timing when julius chooses now to come down.
He runs over to her, worried and panicked, calling out her name.

The Virgin Ghostess Chapter 3

By Ogunsola Ayobami Samuel 

Encountering her father and brother in the police station, Julia was able to regain part of her memory before she died. She remembered her family’s restaurant was a bustling business, with customers lining up outside the door. Everyone had called her “Daughter” and she’d treated the male customer with affectionate bickering, singing for them when they insisted.Now, Julia in kate’s body goes back to the restaurant with her dad, who carries drunk Little Bro on his back. It’s emotional for her to take in the familiar surroundings, and she holds back tears while eating the dinner her dad prepares for her. Everywhere she sees things she’d nagged him about when she’d been alive; we know poor hapeless Dad has been struggling without her, and it’s evident in every corner of the restaurant.Her dad thanks her for helping his son and insists on giving her cab fare home. Hurrying out, Julia looks around the neighborhood with tear-filled eyes, recognizing everything as memories of the friendly neighborhood shop-owners flood back to her. Forgetting herself, she speaks familiarly to one woman before realizing that she isn’t recognizable in this body.As Julia walks pass the police station, she remembers how she used to deliver lunch to the officers—and how she’d taken extra care with Officer John’s(Lisa husband and julius brother-in-law) , sneaking an egg into his rice bowl. She thinks that he’s still as warm as ever: “Everything else is the same, but why am I the only one not here? With all these memories, why did I die?” She still can’t recall the moment she died, and she wonders what happened.The next day, Julia dad drinks alone in his empty restaurant as julius cooking contest program plays on TV. He recognizes Julia (well, Kate ), as well as the dish she’d made out of julius burned rice—that rice soup that he no longer serves because it was Julia’s specialty.Over at the Restaurant,Mike the assistant chefs watch the episode and called julius a genius for coming up with such a dish when he doesn’t even eat rice, and praise Julia as a natural. Of course, bratty Mike is still bitter about losing his shot at TV fame and grumbles about it, but everyone else is impressed.*****************Julia in kate’s body visits her dad restaurant She asks about his daughter, but he merely says she’s gone “far away.” Then he insists on popping out for something to offer his guest, and Julia looks around the living area, nearly in tears again to see that her dad has left her room exactly the same.That’s when her brother Alex finds her and asks what she’s doing, eyeing her with suspicion. She rolls her eyes and snaps back, and it’s only when her dad tells Alex to thank her for helping him home last night that he very grudgingly does.Julia arrives at the restaurant to find the staff lined up before Julius , who talks in a calm, reasonable tone that’s frankly scarier than yelling outright. He says he would have lent money if needed, or praised someone for taking a few ingredients to practice on, but can’t abide this theft. Especially with expensive caviar, even if the rest of the pilfered items were laughably cheap.Julia catches the drift of this lecture belatedly, and when julius asks for a confession, she starts to speak up. But  chef Mike speaks up first, to suggest that they’re all trustworthy and that this kind of inquisition will cost them much more in loyalty than the money they lost in a bottle of soy sauce here, a pair of gloves there. He’s just about quaking in his boots as he suggests that they all work a little harder to make up for the loss, and solve the problem that way.But julius just smiles knowingly: “It’s you, isn’t it?” Mike denies it but can’t look julius in the eye, and that just confirms it for julius . So Mike comes clean (at least about the caviar), admitting that he brought a girl here and cooked something up to impress her, and had intended to replace the ingredients. He swears that he didn’t steal the other things, which of course is unconvincing in these circumstances, and Julia tries to break into the conversation carefully. But the argument escalates, with julius calling Mike a thug, and Mike getting defensive, and suddenly other grievances start pouring out. Like how the chef favors everyone else, how he’s hard to work for, and how Mike sucked it up for the sake of teamwork and how he feels crazy for sticking it through when he’s not even appreciated. It ends with Mike saying he has other places who’d love him, and julius yelling at him to go then.***********After Mike had left the restaurant, julius calls a friend to ask for any assistant chef possibilities, and is surprised to hear that his reputation for being difficult will probably keep them away. Just then, Alex arrives wearing a dark face, asking if Julia works here. He leaves a box for her with the message that she can keep her pity to herself, and if she’s angling for money, they’re broke.Julius looks through the box and yanks Julia aside, asking for an explanation. Hearing her string of curses (directed at her brother), Mike looks at her in bewilderment, asking what’s wrong with her these days, and what her relationship is to that family. Julia starts explaining about how sad the restaurant is, and how the daughter died and the son is useless and she wanted to help.Julius is incredulous at the sideways logic and asks what she’s going to do about Mike, and she points out that he was the one who lost his temper and wouldn’t let her go after him. Through gritted teeth, julius says they’ll keep this between them, and he’ll take care of Mike.Mike is having a rough time of it himself, having picked up work at the family car wash, where he gets screamed at by his brother/father/uncle and called an idiot. The passenger window rolls open, and he gapes to see julius sitting there, asking if he left the restaurant for this kind of abuse. Neither is very good at this whole reconciliation thing but it makes it extra heartwarming when julius gruffly orders Mike in, and to leave the filthy rags out of his knife-wielding hands.Mike flings the rags away, gets in the car, and curls up to julius ’s chest promising to do better.Julius brings Mike back to the restaurant, where he announces to the staff that they’ll just forget today ever happened. They’ll put aside today’s events and move on, and he offers to take them all out for dinner afterward, saying he hasn’t been as attentive to them as he should have been.They’re heading out the door when julius ’s mother barrels in with the Mrs jane, drunkenly slurring about how she had came to see julius in person. Julia sees Mrs Jane first and ducks behind the boys, shuffling out carefully. But julius Mom calls her out, asking for some water, and Julia holds her breath hoping not to be spotted.Mrs jane looks around the restaurant and finds it full of oddly mixed energies. One look at julius’s face and she’s certain that he’s a strong ghost magnet, which he dismisses out of hand. He heads out, and Mrs Jane tells his Mom to let him go; if he doesn’t believe, then amulet and spells won’t do anything for him. Julia jumps every time  Mrs jane speaks to her, but to her relief, she doesn’t cotton on to anything strange.****************With nowhere else to go after being sent out of her resident, Julia takes her bags to the restaurant, machete and all, and quietly slips inside. She heads up the stairs and looks through the window julius has just stepped out of the shower and is walking around topless. She enjoys the view for a moment, then slips back downstairs… where she’s startled by a ghost.She suggests that the ghost find another place to stay, and when the ghost growls at her, she concedes that they can share the place. Julia tries for the peaceful angle first, but when it seems the ghost is spoiling for a fight, she grabs the machete and supposes they’ll have to have it out.She brandishes the blade and warns the ghost to beware, but then the ghost summons a burst of energy to force the blade away. It slams into some kitchenware, which falls over with a crash. The ghost poofs away, and upstairs, julius is reminded of the medium’s warning that this place is full of ghosts.

To be continued…………