Inside Taejun's bedroom, the next morning unfolds with a weightless silence that presses down on the stillness of the air itself.
The faint light creeping through the threadbare curtains is muted and heavy, casting a pallid grey wash across the room, as if the sun itself hesitates behind a curtain of cloud and cold.
Taejun's eyes flutter open, but the world feels distant, as though it's holding its breath, waiting for something unspoken to unfold.
The sheets cling to his skin, damp with a night's sweat, and the room smells faintly of dust and stale air, untouched since yesterday's fading light.
Slowly, with a slowness that betrays an invisible weight on his chest, Taejun pushes himself upright, his gaze drifting hesitantly around the cramped space, taking in the familiar yet strange details, the cracked plaster, the scattered toys half-buried under a threadbare blanket, the small desk with its lonely, abandoned notebook.
There is no sign of Hyeonjae. The absence is a hollow echo, filling the room with a cold emptiness that the dull morning light cannot soften.
No whispered footsteps, no faint breath from the adjacent room; just the steady, mechanical hum of the world waking beyond these walls, a distant and indifferent rhythm that mocks the stillness here.
Taejun's breath catches slightly, a subtle shiver tracing down his spine as the silence thickens, heavy and expectant, as if the room itself is holding back a secret, waiting to unfold in slow, inevitable motion.
The morning stretches on without warmth or comfort, the quiet more oppressive than any noise, drawing him into a chilling solitude from which even the sun's hesitant glow cannot rescue him.
Then, the door creaked open with a slow, grinding protest from its rusted hinges, a sound that broke the oppressive silence and seemed to reverberate through the cramped space like a crack in the fragile calm.
Taejun's body tensed instantly, muscles coiling beneath the thin blanket, eyes snapping toward the doorway as if bracing for a blow.
The faint scrape of shoes against the worn floorboards was measured and deliberate, each step echoing hollowly in the room's stillness.
His older brother, Haneul, appeared in the doorway, in the dim morning light, barely outlining his rigid frame.
His face was drawn tight, the sharp line of his jaw clenched so firmly that the skin stretched taut, veins visible beneath pale skin. His lips pressed into a thin line, as if words had been swallowed before they could take form.
There was no softness in his gaze, no flicker of warmth or relief. Instead, his eyes were dark and hard, fixed with the weight of years spent holding back storms and secrets.
He shut the door behind him with a slow, deliberate click, the sound final and heavy, sealing the room off from the world beyond. The air grew colder, as if the act had drawn the temperature down by degrees, leaving a sharp edge to the silence.
Without a word, he moved across the small room, his footsteps muffled against the threadbare rug.
When he reached the bed, he perched on its edge, his weariness pulling at his shoulders, and folded his arms tightly across his chest. The faint creak of the mattress springs under his weight seemed to crack the fragile barrier of quiet.
The silence stretched between them, thick and taut as a wire pulled to its limit, waiting to snap.
Finally, Haneul spoke, his voice low and flat, stripped of any attempt at kindness or patience.
"Did you go to that house?"
The question was less a query and more an accusation, weighted with the certainty of past mistakes and dangers best left alone.
Taejun's throat tightened, and the words caught like shards of glass. His gaze dropped, unable to meet the unyielding stare before him, but the answer slipped out in a faint whisper.
"…Y- Yeah."
Haneul gave a slow nod. His face betrayed no surprise, no anger, only a deep, tired resignation, as if he had known all along and was burdened by the knowledge.
His eyes remained distant, locked on some unseen point beyond the room, where memories and regrets lingered like shadows at dusk.
"Yeah, of course you did. What do I expect from a kid like you?"
A sharp breath hissed through his nostrils, cold and hard, as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His fingers curled into tight fists, knuckles pale beneath thin skin.
He still did not meet Taejun's eyes, but his words cut deeper than any glare.
"You think you've grown now?" His tone sharpened, edged with bitter warning. "You think you're ready to dig into things that were buried for a reason? Don't think highly of yourself."
The sentence hung heavily in the air, freezing the space between them. The weight of the warning was not just in the words but in the pause that followed, the silence filled with unspoken threats and the looming presence of consequences that had long been avoided.
The cold seeped into the room, settling over Taejun's skin like frost, the stillness pressing in from all sides with a relentless, unforgiving grip.
Haneul's gaze finally flicked toward Taejun, dark eyes glinting with a mixture of sorrow and steel-hard resolve.
The air between them crackled with tension, a fragile thread stretched thin beneath the weight of things best forgotten, but now inevitably dragging them back into a past neither could escape.
Taejun's voice broke the heavy silence, shaky and barely holding itself together as he struggled to explain the impossible. "I didn't mean to— I just—"
His words stumbled over each other, as though the weight of what he'd seen was choking the air from his lungs. "I saw someone. He said his name was Hyeonjae, and—"
Before he could finish, Haneul's voice cut through sharply, a blade thrown without hesitation. "And now you're best friends with some dead guy, is that it?" The words landed hard, cold, and merciless in the cramped room, slicing through the fragile tension like frozen steel.
Taejun's body jerked with the sudden sting, his breath hitching involuntarily as if the accusation itself had struck him. He swallowed the lump rising in his throat and forced himself to speak, voice barely above a whisper, desperate for understanding. "He helped me. He showed me… Jihoon!"
For a moment, Haneul said nothing, the silence stretching wide between them like a gaping void. Then, slowly, with a stiffness that seemed to harden his very bones, he turned his gaze toward Taejun. His eyes were cold and guarded, pools of something unreadable but unyielding, sharp as shards of ice glinting in pale morning light.
"So he told you," Haneul said, voice low and flat, weighed down with meaning.
Taejun's question came quietly, filled with a fragile hope that barely kept it steady. "Why didn't you?"
Haneul's reply was clipped and cold, words dropping like stones into a frozen lake. "Because it wasn't your burden."
A quiet desperation crept into Taejun's voice, tinged with the raw ache of unspoken grief. "But I feel it anyway. Even if nobody tells me, I still feel like something's missing. And you might be the cause and the root of all my problems."
Haneul's response was a harsh truth without softness or pity.
Taejun's eyes dropped, blinking fast as if trying to hold back tears or perhaps the icy flood of fear rising beneath his ribs. "He was my brother, too. And you?"
Haneul's gaze hardened further, dark and immovable, as if he were shutting away the past behind an unbreakable wall. "And he's dead now." The words fell heavy, like the closing of a coffin lid. "And nothing in that house is going to change that. Not even your little kid's imagination."
A silence followed, thick and suffocating, like smoke curling through a sealed room.
Then Haneul's voice dropped even lower, a grim whisper sharpened by warning and old, bitter knowledge.
"You think it's just ghosts and some childish stories? That place…" His voice cracked slightly, the edge sharpening with menace. "It wants you and Jihoon. It feeds on people like you— little kids looking for something they'll never get back. Jihoon was part of his meal."
Taejun's lip trembled, but no sound escaped. He stayed still, swallowed down by a cold heaviness that wrapped around him like a suffocating shroud.
"You go there again…" Haneul's voice hardened, voice nearly a growl now, a promise edged with danger. "I won't come looking for you. You hear me?"
Taejun's answer was barely audible, breathless, and broken. "...Yeah."
Without another word, Haneul rose from the bed's edge, his movements slow and deliberate as if weighed down by invisible chains. His voice remained cold but quieter now, as if exhaustion had begun to gnaw at his resolve.
"Mom doesn't know this." He paused, the barest hint of tremor in his tone that he fought to suppress. "Don't make her find out, since she's already buried one son and herself along with her husband. Now, all that is left is us and Sera."
He stepped toward the door with a heaviness that filled the air, hand lingering on the cold brass handle.
For a long moment, the room held its breath with him, the faint scrape of his fingers against metal the only sound, sharp and fragile as a whispered prayer.
Then the door creaked open slowly, casting a narrow sliver of shadow across the floor before closing softly behind him, leaving Taejun alone with the thick silence that felt colder than ever.
Haneul's voice came low, cutting through the cold air like a shard of ice slicing through fragile glass. "You think he's still in that house?" His words hovered in the room, heavy with something unspeakable, something dark and wrong that clung to the corners like a shadow too thick to brush away. "If so, you're wrong."
His eyes locked onto Taejun's with a quiet, cruel certainty, a bitter edge that promised truths far worse than the boy could imagine. "Whatever's in there now…" His voice dropped to a near whisper, so cold it felt as if the warmth had been drained from the room entirely. "It isn't him. Not anymore."
There was a pause, a pregnant silence so deep it swallowed the sound of the older brother turning on his heel.
Then, without another word, he was gone.
The door slammed shut behind him, the impact louder and harsher than necessary, like a final punctuation marking the end of whatever fragile hope Taejun still clung to.
The echo bounced coldly off the walls, lingering like a threat left hanging in the stale air.
Taejun remained motionless, eyes fixed on the blank space where the door had been, the hollow quiet pressing down on him until it felt like the room itself was closing in.
Alone again.
The silence around him was not empty but charged, filled with the unseen presence of things better left forgotten, the weight of absence stretching across the floor like a shadow that refused to fade.
The chill in the air deepened, crawling beneath his skin and settling into the hollow where comfort once lived, leaving behind only the sharp sting of isolation and the relentless pull of a dark, unspoken truth.