No people, living or otherwise, are immediately apparent.

It's not hard to find the treehouse his classmates mentioned, the one that the kid who murdered his parents fell out of and broke his neck.  Looks a bit mundanely dangerous to get up there, though; the steps nailed to the tree trunk have had a couple decades of elemental exposure.

"The famous treehouse!" he says to the camera. "At least one part of the story was true. But I don't want to break my neck so I am going to be careful here. Unfortunately for you guys, that means the view will not be amazing, but hopefully the mic can pick up on what I'm saying just fine." He has an armband where he can secure his phone and then he can start climbing the steps verrrrrrry carefully, making sure to pretty thoroughly check each of them before actually putting his weight down.

Then he can ascend without falling!  This board in particular feels pretty weak, but they're close enough together that he can skip that one if he wants to.

Roger that. He is being very slow and methodical anyway. "Sorry, guys, I know this is slow, but safety first! If something's gonna kill me it better be the axe murdering ghost and not me being stupid." Next step, pull on it, see if it's shaky at all.

"You know, it's really hard to find information about murders from almost thirty years ago, but one thing I did dig up was that he fell down the stairs bad enough to be hospitalised shortly before all the everything happened. Now, that could be a coincidence, but maybe not, and what am I here for if not speculating about people who died three decades ago? And, you know, a kid mysteriously falls down the stairs that badly, and then kills his parents... makes you think, what could've happened?"

Another step, pull on it. "There's an obvious guess, though, isn't there? Especially that long ago. The West is good about gays now but it sure wasn't back then." Step seems good, onto it. "I wonder if Jeremy was cute. I couldn't find any pictures of him."

The treehouse has pile of a couple crumpled blankets and several books, over in the least-damaged corner.  One of them has fallen half off of the stack, pages up, the relatively unweathered whiteness standing out against everything else.

"Is it bad that I'm talking about the West, now? Oops, guess the foreigner in me's slipping through." He allows his accent to get thicker for that last sentence. "But, well, what can I say, Korea does suck a lot more for gays. You know, I wasn't out, back there? Or, like, people pretty much knew, but I wasn't, you know, out out. Almost no one was. So scandalous. People could get into physical fights over being called gay. I mean, it's 2025—wait I'm here now, I got distracted."

He grabs his phone again and points it at the place, light on. "Kind of surprising that there are still objects here? It's been thirty years. Also, still no ghosts. Unless the books are the ghosts. Hello, Mr. ghost, I'm sorry to intrude—wait, that's probably rude. Hello, Mr. Jeremy, I'm afraid I forgot your last name, and maybe you're one of the parents instead. I'm going to look through your books to judge your literary taste but if you have objections to this feel free to voice them!"

There's a book of assorted poetry, a couple classic mysteries, and the first three Kite's Attendings.

"Actually that was also rude," he says, looking over the books. "I'm sorry, it's just that I don't think ghosts are real and it makes it hard to take it seriously. The non rude version of it is—you know, I'm not sure? It's just rude to just invade someone's tree house without invitation and then look through their books like that. Well, if you're real, I'm sorry for being rude, I promise I wouldn't be doing this if I thought so.

"On the bright side I lied, I can't actually judge your literary taste because I'm too foreign to recognise any of these. Poetry, though, you sound like a very interesting ghost." What genre is Kite's Attending?

Looks kinda old-timey?  Fantasy, maybe.  They're doorstoppers.  If he cracks one open and flips through it he can catch both some really flowery prose and like, tables of shipment information.

Huh, okay. "Old books. I suppose you died thirty years ago, stands to reason. I should see if I can find books to recommend you that came out since you died. I guess there's Harry Potter but let's not support the transphobe. ...do you know what transphobia is? I'm not sure how common that was in the culture back then. I'll explain later if you're curious, but let's just say the author of Harry Potter is a shitty person. Also the prose is not as good."

Nothing happens in response to this.

No, he didn't expect it to. "I'm not gonna take the books in case there's someone who actually owns them but now I'm curious so I'm just gonna," and he takes some pictures. "Well, here we go, then, no ghosts in evidence other than these oddly well-preserved books. Time to climb down those scary steps and see the rest of the property. ...maybe I should've been streaming this rather than just recording it, get some interaction. Hey guys, do you think I should be an influencer? I'm pretty enough, and really funny and charming, I think I'd do great as an influencer." He looks substantially more amused than that warrants. "Anyway, bad visuals incoming." He attaches his phone back to his armband and starts making his way back down, just as slow and methodical as on the way to.

....No.  No, actually, he must not be climbing as carefully, because one of the boards snaps off from its nail under his foot.  And if he's being careful to hold on with his hands in spite of this, it'll turn out that they're much slipperier than he was expecting.  He's going down the hill.

What. 

What!!!!!!

Well he knows how to fall. This, uh, is not the ideal falling situation, but fucked if he's gonna let his back hit the ground, a broken arm is a lot more recoverable. He tries to twist to fall on his side and tuck his chin and bend his knees—

It almost feels like something shoves him.  Maybe he landed on a branch and levered it somehow; in any case: down the hill he goes.  There's a creek at the bottom.

This was a stupid idea. Seriously, seriously stupid. He really should've refused. Let them think he's a coward, they're cowards, too. Fuck, man. 

Fine. He's not a swimmer but he can swim, hold his breath and keep the chin tucked in and knees folded and wait a bit rather than flail, let his body's momentum smooth out in the water before he tries to go back up—

It's really not that deep, actually.  He might not even get his knees wet, if he were standing up.

But something's pinning him to the bottom, so that's not really an available point of comparison.

...pinning him? What is? No, that has to stop right the fuck now, he's not a swimmer and he can't actually hold his breath that long so he needs to get rid of whatever is trapping him right now.

He can successfully get whatever it is off one of his arms, but then a few seconds later it's just replaced by something holding his head down.

...once is bad luck, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. And he knows how to deal with enemies. It is by stabbing.

Where is his knife. Can be get his knife. He can't get his knife. His brain is lacking oxygen but he must not breathe in, this is an embarrassing way to die, he can get his knife, he needs to get his knife and use it to—stab—less panic, he needs to stop panicking and to just execute, remove whatever is in his way and get his head up, he can't die he can't die he's too young he just moved away from Kang Jaehyuk he's just started to live he can't die—

Yeah, this doesn't really help.

...fine. Fine! If he's gonna die then he's going to choose when to die. He's not gonna let his involuntary movements and his assailant win. He's gonna die on his terms. 

......he doesn't want to die. 

Fuck it. 

Fuck it. 

Fuck. 

He breathes in.

And, shortly after, he dies.

Stupid.

And then he's on the shore, and there's someone else's mouth on his mouth, breathing life into him.