The mechanical weeping of the Polaroid camera still echoed inside Arya's head, leaving a lingering hum that gripped his motor nerves. His breath came in ragged gasps, frantically pumping oxygen into his tight chest. With a trembling hand, he slowly reached out to pick up the polaroid photograph still resting on the small tray.

Yet the moment his fingertips brushed the paper, the photograph violently snapped backward, sliding back into the camera's body with a sharp metallic click before vanishing without a trace.

Damn it! Damn it! What the hell was that? Arya's mind screamed in panic. His brain raced wildly, desperately hunting for rationality. It must have been a hallucination. I'm exhausted from the long trip, or maybe an electrical short triggered the flash mechanism of that old relic. Yeah, that's it—just a short circuit!

Arya squeezed his eyes shut, biting his lip until he tasted iron, trying to steady the violent trembling in his knees. He refused to give in to terror on his very first night here. Grandfather Haris had spent decades of his life in this place without any issues, so there was no way anything was wrong.

With stiff movements, Arya forced his gaze away from the dark corner of the room and hurried toward the wall near the entrance. Groping blindly along the cold surface, his fingers finally brushed against the raised plastic casing of the main light switch, its white paint peeling away with age.

Click.

The overhead incandescent bulb flickered wildly, casting a weak, jaundiced glow that barely rivaled a dying candle. The old electrical wiring groaned with a harsh buzz, as if the cables hidden behind the walls were rotting away under a crushing weight. Dim as it was, the light at least pushed back the suffocating shadows creeping from the corners of the room.

"Phew... okay, calm down, Arya. Everything is fine," he whispered, his voice sounding terribly thin and fragile in the vast, quiet room.

He decided he needed to keep busy. Throwing himself into manual labor was the only way to keep his sanity from shattering. Arya snatched a stiff-bristled broom from behind the door and began sweeping the ceramic floor, which was blanketed by a thick layer of dust like an expanse of gray snow.

Every time the broom brushed against the floor, dust billowed into the air, making his chest itch. Yet beneath the monotonous rustle of the bristles, an unsettling anomaly once again ambushed his senses.

Arya froze. He frowned, inhaling deeply through his nose.

At first, he only caught the scents of mildew, damp wood, and aged paper. But slowly, a faint draft drifted from the central hallway, carrying another aroma—a scent that was intensely sharp, biting, and intimately familiar to anyone in photography: the pungent, chemical reek of fixer and developer solutions.

"Wait... where is that smell coming from?" Arya muttered softly, his heart, which had just begun to slow down, pounding wildly all over again.

He leaned forward, sniffing the air. The acidic chemical stench grew stronger, as potent as if someone had just poured it fresh from a gallon jug a few seconds ago. Yet, according to his uncle and the neighboring residents, this studio had been left vacant and sealed tight for three weeks ever since Grandfather Haris's death. No one had stepped foot inside. No chemicals had been mixed.

How could volatile chemical agents still smell this strong? Unless... unless someone had just used them today, Arya thought, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up. His mind began churning out horrific scenarios. Is Grandfather... is my grandfather still here? Is he down in the darkroom, continuing his old routine somewhere inside this house?

"No, no way. Don't be insane, Arya!" he panicked, striking his own forehead with the palm of his hand. "Dead men don't develop film! You're just scaring yourself to death!"

Despite his brain's fierce denials, a morbid cocktail of curiosity and pure terror dragged his footsteps toward his grandfather's large mahogany desk in the corner of the room—a heavy wooden table cluttered with stacked photo albums, old newspaper clippings, and analog camera gear.

Arya began wiping down the surface of the desk with a small handkerchief. His movements were sluggish, his eyes darting warily to every shadowy corner of the room, bracing himself for whatever might leap out of the dark.

However, as he swept the cloth across the middle drawer of the desk, his elbow accidentally clipped the brass handle of a drawer that wasn't fully latched.

Creak.

The drawer slid open by about two inches. Arya snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned by an open flame. He stared into the pitch-black gap of the drawer with bated breath.

Amidst the heavy silence of the night, a strange sound emerged from inside the slightly ajar drawer.

Tap... tap... tap.

A soft, rhythmic, and undeniably real tapping. The sound of fingernails gently scraping the wood from the inside of the drawer, pleading to be let out, as though something was trapped tight within and running out of air.

"Oh, God..." Arya whispered, his knees turning to water. He stumbled backward, his horrified eyes locked onto the wooden drawer, while the tapping grew steadily faster and much louder.