The next morning bled into the world with a cruel kind of grace, as though nothing had been touched, nothing had been twisted, nothing had crawled out of the mirror to scream his name.
The kitchen was warm, filled with lazy shafts of sunlight that slanted through the blinds and painted thin golden bars across the linoleum floor.
The soft hum of the refrigerator was steady, rhythmic, almost comforting in its mundanity.
Outside, birds chirped with mechanical cheer through the open window, as if reading from a script, their voices too bright, too unbothered.
The kettle puffed quiet steam from the stovetop.
A pair of socks hung from the chair, and his school uniform, creased, still smelling faintly of the attic's dust and smoke, lay folded neatly on the foot of his bed, like someone had placed it there with care, like a mother who no longer lived in the house had smoothed it flat in the hours before dawn.
But Taejun stood still, staring down the hallway toward the attic door that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
The soft murmur of the world continued around him, oblivious to the rupture that had torn through the walls just hours ago.
There were no scorch marks on the floor, no flickering candles left behind, no mirror shards embedded in the wood or glassy water stains that should've bled through from the circle.
The attic door was closed now.
But Taejun knew that behind it, something ancient and heartbroken and patient was still breathing.
Not through some dramatic whisper or flickering shadow, but in that hollow weight beneath the bones, in the tug at the edge of his memory like a hand still clinging to his shirt, in the damp heat behind his eyes that hadn't fully dried since last night.
He hadn't cried, but his body had.
His throat was scraped clean from too many half-spoken screams.
His legs ached with the imprint of flight.
His arms still remembered the pull of Hyeonjae's grip, the desperate strength of a man who had dragged him not just from a haunted place, but from a decision that might have shattered what little Taejun had left of his own identity.
He sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the bowl of cereal that had gone soggy five minutes after he poured it, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it out.
It felt too much like abandoning something, like forgetting something small, and he couldn't forget.
Not after the face in the mirror.
Not after the name that had fallen like a guillotine in that final moment.
Jihoon.
A wound carved deep into the house and into him both.
His fingers curled unconsciously around the toy soldier that now sat in his hoodie pocket.
Hyeonjae had pressed it into his hand just before disappearing down the stairs, his face pale and quiet in the moonlight, like a man who had been running from his past for too long and had finally let it catch up.
He hadn't said much.
He just told Taejun to keep it and said it would help him remember, that remembering was all that stood between survival and vanishing.
Taejun hadn't understood the full weight of those words until he woke up this morning and felt how easily the world tried to convince him it had all been a dream.
Every second that passed tried to erase the fear.
The hallway looked smaller in the light.
As he stood up, his body moved like it was wearing clothes made of iron.
Every joint clicked with resistance, like he was trying to re-enter a world he no longer belonged in.
He walked to the hallway and stood outside the attic door for a long moment.
The doorknob was cold beneath his hand.
But deep down, he knew if he turned it, if he stepped inside, the house would be there, beneath the skin of this place, like an infection beneath smooth flesh.
He thought of Jihoon, the way his eyes had screamed without sound, the way he had offered that toy, not in accusation, but in longing.
And Taejun understood, now, what Hyeonjae had meant when he said they hadn't escaped, only slipped through its teeth because the house had not been defeated.
It had only lost its grip, for now.
And somewhere inside it, a boy who once shared his face was still waiting.
He backed away from the door and turned, just as the front gate creaked open.
Outside, in the sharp gold light of morning, Hyeonjae stood leaning against the rusted frame of his car, smoking a cigarette like a man preparing for one final war.
His eyes, when they met Taejun's, held no smile, no comfort, but just the heavy silence of someone who had carried a burden too long and now meant to pass it on properly.
Taejun didn't ask why he was here.
They drove without speaking, the toy soldier clutched tightly in Taejun's fist, the road unfolding in long, grey ribbons beneath them as the morning sun slowly gave way to cloud.
Where they were going, he didn't know.
Whether the house would let them come back, he didn't care.
All that mattered now was the boy who had waited.
The memory that refused to rot.
The bond that wasn't severed by blood or time or death.
And if Taejun had to walk back through the dark to find him, then so be it.
At school, he hardly spoke, not because he didn't know what to say but because language felt irrelevant, flimsy, and shallow to contain the weight of what he had seen.
The classroom was a diorama, a stage play viewed from the wrong seat, where voices blurred into distant hums and colors bled into washed-out gray.
The teacher's words, chalk squeaks on the board, the neat shuffle of worksheets, all of it passed over him like fog rolling through a window left ajar, cold and impersonal.
His classmates leaned in close with whispers and laughter, trading inside jokes and snack packets like currency, but none of it touched him.
Even when a ball bounced past his feet during break and someone called his name, twice, louder the second time, he barely turned his head.
His body was here, anchored to the plastic chair, the hard desk, the scent of pencil shavings and sweat baked into the tile floors, but his mind hovered elsewhere.
Not even the cafeteria noodle, usually lukewarm but somehow always comforting, could reach him.
The broth tasted like paste, the noodles limp in his mouth, and when the tray clattered empty into the bin, he didn't remember eating it at all.
He stared at the red-lacquered tray edge like it had been part of a dream.
The type you wake from with your heartbeat in your throat and your hands clenched into claws.
The house hadn't followed him, not in the way stories promised haunted things would. No black-eyed shadows were lurking behind his textbooks, no cold drafts slithering down the hallway, no whispers echoing in the stalls of the bathroom when he was alone.
The house was quiet.
He could feel it, not in the walls, but in the stillness between his breaths, in the way his footsteps echoed slightly longer in the school hallway than they should have.
He had stepped into something, into someone, and the imprint hadn't faded.
It clung to him like oil in the skin, invisible to the world but heavy in the soul.
And when the last bell rang, cutting across the drone of the ceiling fan like a sword, he moved without thinking.
Students erupted around him in a flurry of motion and voices, filling their arms with backpacks and snacks and weekend plans.
Some ran, some dragged their feet.
They spilled out through the double doors and down the steps, dissolving into the steady current of Busan's evening rhythm: the chime of crosswalk lights, the hiss of passing buses, the flickering glow of convenience stores waking up for the night crowd.
But Taejun walked the other way.
His feet moved with quiet precision, not hurried, not reluctant, just inevitable, like retracing a scar.
Even the same sidewalk, the same cracks, the same rain-dented grooves in the concrete he used to hop over when he was smaller, the same alley where the wind always smelled faintly of rust and gasoline, the same cracked stone wall, crooked and leaning, as though the ground beneath had shifted long ago and the house had been waiting for someone to notice.
The sun was low now, not yet vanished but trailing its fingers across the sky in long strokes of lavender and bruised orange.
The clouds above were heavy, unmoving, the kind that seemed to watch instead of pass.
The air held its breath.
And there, standing where he had stood before, was the house.
But it was different now.
Not in its shape, not in its broken shutters or sagging eaves or the ivy that clung to its frame like veins.
It was different in feelings, like it had heard him coming, like it had prepared itself.
The windows, though still clouded with dust, seemed more reflective now, catching the light in ways that hinted at movement within.
The porch looked darker, the steps longer, as if the house had stretched itself subtly to meet him halfway.
And though it made no sound, not a creak or whisper, it radiated a stillness that pulsed like breath held in a sleeping lung.
He didn't stop, but he didn't run either.
He stepped through the gate and let it groan closed behind him, his fingers brushing the rusted handle that still bore faint fingerprints, his, or Jihoon's, or someone else's from long before.
The front yard, overgrown with weeds and shards of pottery swallowed by dirt, now seemed less like neglect and more like camouflage, as if the house had never wanted to be found, only remembered.
The boards under his shoes creaked, but softer this time, almost familiar.
The door was ajar, just slightly.
Leaning against the rust-bitten iron gate with one foot crossed over the other and his shoulders relaxed in that signature way that always made him look like he never truly belonged to any moment, Hyeonjae looked up as Taejun came into view.
His posture was casual, not careless, but calculated in the way that spoke of hours spent waiting without impatience, of thoughts winding through years and regrets, and that quiet ache that only a man who had lost things could carry in silence.
The wind tossed his dark hair across his brow in slow, ghostlike fingers, and though the street was empty, the way he stood, like a fixed landmark against the drift of everything else, made it feel like this meeting wasn't chance or choice, but inevitability.
He waved with two fingers, the greeting that usually belonged to coffee shops or weekend lunches, not to the doorstep of a cursed house that had swallowed memory and spat out grief.
"Yo," he called, not loudly, just enough to cut through the atmosphere like a blade that knew exactly where to land.
His voice didn't tremble, didn't carry weight, because all the weight was in his eyes.
Taejun blinked, the sight of him so abrupt and wrong that it took a full breath to comprehend.
"What are you doing out here?" Taejun asked, more startled than curious, though the question came out almost as a whisper, as if raising his voice might summon something from the house behind them.
Hyeonjae didn't flinch.
He pushed himself off the gate like the metal had simply been a passing support and straightened his spine with the fluid ease of someone used to hiding bruises.
His coat, long and wind-worn, caught the dying light at the edges, giving him the illusion of something more than human for a moment, something that had walked longer roads than Taejun could imagine.
"I... was waiting for you, of course," he said with an ease that wasn't casual, not really, because beneath that simple phrase was something that hinted at how long he had been waiting. "I figured you'd come here again."
"…Why?" The question was small, not because Taejun meant it to be, but because everything else, the house, the silence, the taste of dirt and memories, was too big for a kid like him.
Hyeonjae didn't answer right away.
He let the question hang between them like fog, not ignoring it, just giving it the respect of time.
Then he shrugged, not flippantly, but like someone admitting to an old, inescapable truth.
"Because there's something else I want to show you," he said, and his voice dropped slightly, just enough to suggest that this wasn't some lingering echo of the haunted thing they had escaped the night before. "And it's not a haunted place this time. I promise."
"Not haunted? What do you mean?" Taejun repeated, narrowing his eyes, though his body had already begun the smallest of movements toward him, curiosity pulling at his feet, a tug in his chest that felt too close to hope.
Hyeonjae didn't smile this time.
His mouth twitched, and his eyes flicked toward the west, where the sun had finally vanished, and the sky had grown darker, edged with a violet so deep it bled into black.
"This time, there will be no more ghosts," he said quietly. "No mirrors, and we're not going anywhere near this house. But there is something I need to show you. A thing I buried a long time ago. It was a thought that I could forget. And if you're going to survive what's coming next, you need to see it too."