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Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.17 - Legwork And Calls

Loren has never been to Yurilao. To be fair, he’d never been to much of the other parts of Selurong. When he’d been younger, he’d been too busy going back and forth between home and school, and keeping Harmony out of trouble. They’d gone to some places, but that had been with their families as part of a thing, and they hadn’t exactly s...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.16 - Free To Good Homes

Loren hadn’t actually had a plan for what to do after all the plamo figures started raising their hands. He also severely underestimated how creepy it would be to see so many seemingly-inanimate dolls simply start moving. All over the shelf, model figures start raising their arms. Some of their movements were stiff and jerking, b...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.15 - Just Ask

“Loren, Harmony, Malory, can I talk to you three for a second? Just a quick word, don’t worry,” Steve said as Loren was packing his lunch containers into his backpack and was about to go buy some softdrinks. As the one who didn’t mind walking out into the hot sun, it had worked out that he would go off to buy everyone some cold drinks, w...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.14 - A Slice Of Life

The next morning, Loren woke up to the sound of the alarm on his phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous slab of electronics. Fumbling as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he’d liked five years ago, he finally—

He felt something on his mattress move, and...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.13 - Not A Visitor

Nancy Bayan was someone Loren had only heard off from hearsay, mostly from Harmony being fangirlish and slightly stalkery. A Symbol of Honor—as they were called these days, since ‘Righteousness’ was pretty long and not as well regarded anymore—she was the leader of Faling Sky, both of whom Harmony was a big fan.

Unfortunately for H...

3/11/24 Update

So, just some announcements. We're coming to the end of the year, and just like everyone else, IRL gets pretty busy for me. So unfortunately, I have to announce some weeks where I won't be posting anything because Christmas and Christmas prep. To that end, I won't be posting on Christmas week and the week before Christmas. That's from the 16th t...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.12 - Plague

In his 22 years of life, Loren had been in his share of fights. Most had taken place before he’d turned twelve, back in grade school when the consequences for them weren’t, in hindsight, very dire. Parental disapproval, revoked privileges, getting teased about losing to a girl, pain… all minor things, when he looked back on them. He’d ha...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.11 - Keres

The cars on the road were already at a dead stop when Loren stepped out his building and into the cool, predawn gloom. The sky was already turning blue from the sun just over the horizon, and he could feel the sun’s energy just over the horizon as some of it began to fill the sky. He sighed as he stared at the utterly stalled vehicles. Already...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun and Profit! S.01 - The Symbol Of Despair

Set a week after the first chapter

It was a perfectly normal day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Harmony Riana Adlawan—Hari to her best friend, because once upon a time both of her names had been too long for the child he’d been to pronounce properly—walked with a s...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.10 - Emergency Day Off

The next morning, Loren was in the middle of packing his lunch—he was at the worksite today—when his phone started blaring its emergency alert tone. Sighing, he picked it up, even though the alerts almost never applied to him. Still, if a keres had managed to manifest and was being fought by the vigilants, he needed to know where so he knew ...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.09 - Dolls And Spirits

Loren had thought that finding corroborating evidence for the idea of figurines becoming tsukumogami outside of Amatsushima wuld be difficult. After all, if it was a thing that happened, surely he’d have heard of it as being common before now, right?

At first, his searches when the got back to Happy Homes—after being told sternly that ...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.08 - Preliminary Assessment Meeting

“Well, we know we’re dealing with a real haunting,” Malory said as she daintily used a knife to cut her muffin into neat little pieces. “I didn’t see anyone hiding, although there are a lot of those toys under the chairs that they must have missed. Unless either of them was a mage of some sort?”

Steve shook his head. “Neither...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.07 - Mrs. Halili’s Story

“It took us a while to notice it happening, because at first we thought it was just someone locking the screen door. Normally we leave it open so people could get out fast, but that month, whenever I tried to go outside to tend to the garden or go to the store, I’d find the screen door latched shut. It wasn’t really a hindrance, since it w...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.06 - The Bright Little House

“Hey, you okay, Lor?” Harmony asked as they sat in Steve’s car.

Loren clutched at his backpack, reminding himself he had two bottles of oil in there. Also his lunch and a change of clothes, but he wasn’t going to use those for fuel unless he was really desperate. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? We might be a facing another gho...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.05 - A Job To Keep

It turned out that Sara was quite willing to take a little time from her morning to press the button on the rice cooker, provided he’d loaded it with rice and water the night before. She was also quite happy to taste even simple corned beef if the way the apartment’s temperature slowly cooled as she did the ghostly equivalent of running arou...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.04 - The Construction Worker Diet

It had been some time since Loren had needed to explain what his magic was like. Fortunately, Sam listened more attentively than his little cousins, and didn’t interrupt him ask is he could shoot lasers from his hands (yes, but he didn’t know how, but lasers weren’t as good as plasma), fly (again yes, but it was a whole thing because how t...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.03 - Cement Mixer

Not everything worked so smoothly as that. For example, it took Loren a while to realize that he’d need a lot of cooking oil for this little bit of alchemy, and the bottles he’d brought with him wouldn’t be enough. He had less than a liter of the stuff, since one of the two bottles he had in his backpack was only two-thirds full, not nearl...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.02 - First Day At Work

Loren woke up to the sound of phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous piece of electronics. He fumbled as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he’d liked seven years ago, until he final found the little aluminum tablet. Fingers flailed, trying to get it to stop as ...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.01 - Useful Skills

Loren woke up to the sound of his alarm on his phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous piece of electronics. He fumbled as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he’d liked five years ago, until he final found the little aluminum tablet. Fingers flailed, trying to ge...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.9 - Now We Get To The Central Premise

“Thank you for your help,” Loren said as he shook hands with Steve and then Malory, pocketing the receipt he’d just been given.

“Glad to see a happy client,” Steve said with a smile as they stood next to the car that had brought them here. “I have some literature I can recommend to you back at the office. With a little work, yo...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.8 - Bargaining with Spirits

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Steve said, sounding like a kindly grandfather—well, uncle—when the ghost finally looked up. “But there’s something we need to talk to you about.” There was a thump as he set down the one chair Loren had brought to the apartment. It was a plastic monobloc, since he hadn’t been expecting visitors ...

Demesne Snippets 12: Fatherly Thoughts

Lying in bed next to his wife and children, Orris started feeling for the water bowl out of a lifetime of habit before he recalled where he was and he didn’t need to wash the colors from his eyes before he opened them. He still gently patted at his eyes before he opened them. The ceiling far above him came into view, made of solid beams and pl...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.7 - Necromancy for Non-Necromancers

Maybe he should have paid more attention to Harmony’s flowchart.

Loren watch as Steve carefully used the key to unlock Apartment 409. He and Harmony stayed well away from the door lest the ghost react. The spiritualist cautiously opened the door, looking inside. Next to him, Malory moved the ghost candle to let its flame shine into the a...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.6 - Preparations

The next morning, Loren once more found himself in Happy Homes. It wasn’t as unreasonably early as last time since he wasn’t commuting with Harmony so she could show him how to get there, so he wasn’t feeling half-asleep, so he was able to use his Flame to give him a burst of energy to at least reasonably fake being a morning person.

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.5 - Deductions

After the first guy—who’d never given his name and kept his answers brief and concise—they’d moved on to room 408, whose residents had been a young oni couple. The two had been far more vocal and friendly than the other guy, introducing themselves as Shawn and Mary. It turned out that they’d been the ones who’d reported Dalisay’s d...

Demesne Snippets 11: Stone Setting

Trees sometimes had uses. Maybe.

“Is this what you need?” Shana said, holding out a broken branch. It was slim, the bark still soft and the wood inside wet and pale. The stump was a brush-like mess, as the little girl—who also happened a Dungeon Binder, like something out of a story—had needed to pull and wrench at th...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.4 - Starting The Investigation Procedural Sequence

With the arrangements made and most of the work officially foisted off on Harmony, Loren had to deal with the rest of the consequences of technically being homeless again. He finally went back home—it was the middle of the day, so his parents were at work and his sister was in school, but their housekeeper let him in—and from there sent his ...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.3 - The Consequences Of Isolation

“…and then Harmony suggested I speak to you,” Loren finished. “She said you could help me find a way to use the apartment by… well, finding a way to live with the ghost.”

Steve nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “I see.” He sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, Loren—can I call you Loren?—our company doesn’t really d...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.2 - Welcome To Happy Homes

Fortunately, Auntie Ganda and her husband Mang Tetsu were cool with him staying over another night. It wasn’t the first time they’d had Loren overnight, though the last time he’d stayed here had been when he and Harmony were eighteen and they’d stayed over because it had been easier to commute to a college entrance exam. Before that, he ...

Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 0.1 - The Lease Didn't Mention This…

In the middle of his first night sleeping in his new apartment, Loren Abo woke up from troubled dreams to find himself shivering violently from the cold. He gasped, arms flailing as he instinctively tried to swim out of whatever cold water he was submerged in before realizing he could breathe. Blinking, Loren hastily tried to sit up, but it felt...