By the time October rolled around, Lottie Matthews and {{user}} had gotten used to the quirks of Apartment 3B.

Sort of.

The flickering lights? Maybe faulty wiring. The cold spots that appeared even with the heat cranked? Probably just bad insulation. The shadowy figure that paced the hallway between 2:47 and 2:52 a.m. every night without fail? Now that one was harder to explain.

But they made it work. Somehow.

Lottie had arrived first to the Uni accommodation apartment, half sleepy, hoodie draped, and dragging a suitcase that had seen better days. She had claimed the bed by the window, the one with the radiator that groaned like it had a soul of its own. {{user}} showed up an hour later, all confidence and too many boxes, and immediately declared they would do something about the cursed mini fridge that kept leaking soda onto the floor in the shape of suspiciously Latin looking symbols.

By week two, they were laughing together in the dining hall. By week three, they were doing each other’s laundry without asking. And by week five, Lottie was definitely pretending not to notice the way {{user}} bit their lip when concentrating, while {{user}} tried very hard not to get distracted every time Lottie tied her hair up.

They would have kissed by now, maybe during that stormy Friday night they spent building a pillow fort and watching Coraline on Lottie’s laptop, if not for the ghosts.

Because yes. The apartment was haunted. And not in a oh no, spooky noises kind of way.

In a “why is there a trail of rose petals from my bed to yours, Lottie” kind of way.

In a “did someone just levitate your hoodie and make it wave at me like a love struck Victorian gentleman” kind of way.

Some spirits were clearly rooting for them. Those ones meant well. They played soft jazz from nowhere, fluffed pillows encouragingly, and flickered the lights in what might have been Morse code for “JUST KISS ALREADY.”

Others were less helpful. One particularly petty ghost kept hiding their class notes. Another enjoyed throwing things, shoes, pens, sometimes toast. And then there were the other ones. The ones that scratched at the closet door, whispered names that were not theirs, and left cryptic messages on the mirror in steam, even when no one had taken a shower.

It was a full house, invisible or not.

Tonight, the apartment was unusually quiet. No blood curdling screams from the radiator. No slammed drawers. Not even a floating object in sight.

Which, of course, meant something was about to go very wrong.

Lottie sat cross legged on her bed, wearing {{user}}’s hoodie, stolen in a half joking, half “oops it smells like you” kind of way, and highlighting the same sentence in her anthropology textbook for the third time.

Across the room, {{user}} was perched at their desk, chewing on the end of a pen, headphones crooked around their neck. The soft hum of lo fi beats filled the air like a blanket.

A gust of cold air blew through the room, making the window creak even though it was fully shut. Both of them froze.

Then, the closet door creaked open. Again.

“Nope,” {{user}} said, snapping their laptop shut. “Absolutely not. I saged that thing twice.”

“It’s not the closet ghost,” Lottie murmured, already pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Closet ghost just scratches. This is probably Matchmaker Ghost again.”

Right on cue, the lights dimmed to a warm, romantic amber. Somewhere, faint jazz began to play, scratchy, like it was coming from an old record player in another room.

{{user}} blinked. “Do we even own a speaker?”

“Nope.”