The rest of the day crawled, each minute dragging its belly across his nerves like broken glass, and no matter how he tried to drown himself in arithmetic or word games or the way the sun sliced clean through the windows, the memory would not release him.
It coiled around his spine and bloomed behind his eyes, pressing down on every breath.
Ms. Jang's voice had returned to its regular cadence, soft and almost pleasant, but every syllable felt dipped in something foreign now, something foul— like sugar covering mold.
She passed through the room with the easy calm of someone who had never even held a pointer stick, let alone shattered bone and flayed a child's scalp, and though no one else blinked at her, Taejun couldn't help but stare at her hands every time she reached toward the chalkboard, waiting for a glint of something wet to drip from her sleeve, for a stray clump of hair to fall from her cuff, but it never came.
Everything was clean, as though the morning had simply been a fever dream, a momentary collapse of reason.
And yet the image refused to dissolve.
It was carved into him, muscle-deep and searing, etched in places he couldn't reach, couldn't even explain.
The children around him chattered again, scribbling math problems and laughing at their doodles, perfectly unaware, perfectly unscarred, and for a while, Taejun even began to wonder if he had imagined the corpse that morning, too.
Maybe he hadn't seen it.
Maybe he'd misremembered.
He had read once about shock causing hallucinations, the brain creating false images to cope with real trauma— fragments of horror that stitched themselves together into impossible visions.
Perhaps that was what had happened.
The murder on the street had overwhelmed him, and his mind had twisted, snapped, and hallucinated that nightmare of Ms. Jang flaying someone alive.
Maybe none of it was real.
That explanation clung to him like a child's blanket, and he gripped it tightly, burying himself in the numbers on the page as if fractions could wash the stench of phantom blood from his skin.
But even as he clung to that thought, his body betrayed him.
His hand kept shaking, tremors blooming in his fingertips and crawling up his arm, until the pencil rolled from his grasp and clattered onto the floor, the sound far louder than it should have been.
No one else reacted.
Ms. Jang continued writing on the board, her silhouette framed against the chalk dust haze like a statue, impossibly still.
He leaned forward, retrieving the pencil, and when he sat back up, he noticed something wrong with the light.
It filtered through the windows the same as always, golden and warm, but it looked off, almost sticky, like syrup smeared across the glass.
The shadows didn't fall right, they twisted at strange angles, and for a moment, he could have sworn they were writhing, curling toward him like the feelers of some unseen insect, inching their way across the floor to taste the sweat on his skin.
When the bell finally rang, its tone shrill and too high-pitched like it had been recorded through static, he startled so hard that his chair screeched beneath him.
He shoved his books into his bag, hands fumbling, and joined the stream of children flowing toward the hallway.
Ms. Jang stood at the door with her gentle, unbothered smile, waving them out one by one, and when her eyes landed on him, they lingered— not long, not obvious, but long enough to notice.
Long enough for his breath to hitch in his throat.
Her hand brushed his shoulder in passing.
It was cold, but not skin-cold, not the usual human temperature.
It felt like something that had been abandoned long ago.
Outside, the air smelled wrong. Where it should've been fresh, it should've been spring, dust from the track field, exhaust from the buses, the warm sharpness of pollen, but all he could smell was iron.
That thick scent that pools in the back of your throat after you've bitten your tongue.
He walked slower than usual, his limbs leaden, and the other children passed him in waves, their laughter loud, clean, as if it didn't belong in this world at all.
He caught sight of the playground out of the corner of his eye, its colors bright, its chains swaying lightly in the breeze, and for a moment his stomach turned as he imagined someone hanging from those bars, not swinging, but twitching.
He shook his head, trying to scrape the thought away.
He blamed the corpse again.
He told himself it was the morning, the trauma, the unresolved shock.
He hadn't eaten, and he hadn't slept well.
The mind does strange things when it breaks.
He repeated this in his head over and over as he walked through the front gate, past the smiling security guard who nodded at him with eyes too blank, too glassy, and down the concrete path toward the bus stop.
But each step made it worse.
The sun was high, harsh, burning the pavement in waves that looked like heat shimmer but moved wrong, too fluid, like oil spreading.
The trees were too still.
The world is too quiet between the noises, the kind of silence that feels like it's listening.
He reached the stop and sat on the bench, but his muscles wouldn't rest.
He kept shifting, his breath shallow and cold in his chest.
He looked down at his hands and found them pale, almost bluish, the veins too dark beneath the skin.
He told himself again it was trauma.
Just trauma. It had to be.
But then a voice behind him, soft, familiar, no louder than a whisper, brushed the nape of his neck like the edge of a blade.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
He turned, but no one was there.
Just the empty pavement, just the wind.
But the chill stayed with him.
And something inside his backpack, he couldn't be sure what, shifted.
As Taejun sat frozen on the bench, the bus arriving unnoticed, its rumble a distant drone buried beneath the pressure building in his ears, he couldn't shake the way that voice, thin and familiar in the worst way, had curled around his spine like a nail dragged slowly up his back.
He boarded the bus on muscle memory alone, offered the driver a dull nod, and slumped into a seat near the rear where the windows were crusted with dust and fingerprints, the world outside smeared and sluggish.
The other children chattered around him, carefree and blithe, their backpacks bouncing, their legs swinging, their voices pitched in that shrill, bird-like way only children could manage— but it was all distant, muffled, as though a thick wall of cotton had been shoved between him and the rest of the world.
The seat beneath him felt damp, not wet from rain, not sticky from spilled juice, but clammy, like the lingering sweat of something that had died there, something that had cooled and been forgotten.
He shifted uneasily, but the fabric clung to him as if trying to breathe through his skin.
He kept his head down and his hands in his lap, clutching the hem of his shirt to stop the trembling in his fingers, willing himself not to remember what those trembling hands had once held, that limp bit of scalp, the strands of hair matted in blood, the open flaps of skin like torn construction paper.
That wasn't real, he repeated, this time like a prayer, like a mantra carved into the inside of his teeth.
That wasn't real.
It was trauma, shock, the image of that morning's street corpse bleeding into the folds of his mind, tricking him, making his brain stitch horror where there was only confusion.
That was the trauma effect. That was what the books said.
But the smell wouldn't leave him.
It clung to his nose like a living thing, iron and rot and old meat left in the sun, and no matter how he pinched his nose or breathed through his mouth, it stayed, pulsing with every heartbeat.
The bus turned a corner too sharply.
Someone laughed too loudly.
Taejun flinched, and his bag shifted again, bumping against his leg with a soft thud.
He froze; he hadn't packed anything heavy today except his notebook and some snacks.
Slowly, he reached down, fingers tightening around the zipper.
It felt warm, warmer than it should have.
The kind of warmth that came from flesh, not fabric.
His breath hitched, a trick of the sun, he told himself.
Residual heat from sitting in the sun for too long, nothing more.
When the bus screeched to a stop in front of his apartment building, he didn't remember standing.
Didn't remember walking down the narrow aisle, past the driver who didn't look up, didn't blink, just stared forward with wide, unmoving eyes.
The kind of eyes mannequins had.
The kind of eyes the corpse had.
The apartment complex was unnervingly quiet.
Usually, there were kids in the courtyard, someone yelling across a balcony, the low hum of televisions bleeding through the walls, but today it felt like the whole building had exhaled and then forgotten how to breathe.
He climbed the stairs, footsteps echoing too loudly against the walls, and paused on the second landing.
His door was cracked open enough to show the edge of the shoe rack and the hallway beyond, lit by the sickly orange lightbulb his mother always forgot to replace.
He hadn't left it open.
He stepped inside anyway.
The apartment felt cold.
Not air-conditioning cold, not drafty cold, but dead cold, basement cold, the kind of cold that sticks to the marrow and makes your teeth itch.
"Hyung?" he called, voice small, swallowed immediately by the silence.
There was not even the hum of the refrigerator.
He slipped his shoes off, inching forward, eyes darting to every shadow.
Everything looked the same: the plastic flower vase on the table, the crooked family photo in the hallway, the chipped tile near the kitchen, but something was off, like the furniture had been rearranged and then shifted back, just slightly out of place, like someone who had borrowed his skin and worn it for a day before hanging it back up.
He walked to his room and dropped the bag onto the floor.
It landed with a dull, wet sound.
He stared at it.
Then crouched.
His hand moved without permission.
The zipper gave way, slowly, the teeth separating like flesh peeled back.
Inside was his notebook. A snack pouch. A broken pencil.
And something else.
Stuffed into the bottom, pressed against the seams, was a piece of cloth, dark, heavy, soaked through with something that had dried brown at the edges.
He pulled it out, and the smell hit him instantly, blooming in his throat like a scream he couldn't release.
It was the sleeve of a shirt, a uniform.
The same color as the ones they wore in Class 1-2.
His eyes followed the jagged edge where it had been torn, the threads still frayed, the edge dark with old blood; something was wrapped inside it, something soft and yielding.
He didn't want to open it.
Inside, nestled in the folds of the blood-soaked cloth, was a single human tooth, as if it had been ripped out from warm gums not too long ago.
His legs gave out and hit the floor hard, knees scraping the cheap laminate, but he barely felt it.
He was shaking again, harder this time, not just his hands.
His chest. His jaw. His eyes blurred. His heart thundered against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His mouth opened. Only a rasp and a dry hiss.
He curled into himself, eyes locked on the tooth, whispering again and again, "It's the trauma. It's the trauma. It's the trauma."
But the cloth was warm.
And somewhere, in the apartment that was supposed to be empty, a floorboard creaked.
The creak wasn't loud, it was faint, almost polite, the kind of sound a person might make when trying not to be heard.
But in the paralyzed silence that gripped the apartment, it may as well have been a gunshot.
Taejun didn't move.
His body had gone stiff and hollow, like the blood had drained out and left only a brittle husk trembling on the floor.
The tooth lay beside him, glistening under the hallway light like a maggot polished to shine, and the blood-soaked cloth slumped around it like something still breathing, pulsing faintly with heat.
He forced his eyes toward the hallway.
The shadows seemed thicker now, less passive.
It felt as though they were watching, waiting, curling like tendrils across the linoleum floor.
He told himself it was his brother.
Of course it was.
He'd come home early, he must have.
He hadn't heard the door, but he'd been distracted, panicked, and hallucinating.
It was just he, he'd explain this, he'd take it from his hands, wash the blood away, tell him it was all some horrible misunderstanding.
Maybe a prank.
But he didn't call out, something deep inside, some animal instinct buried in the core of his spine, held his tongue.
There was no warmth in the apartment, no scent of detergent, no quiet clinking of dishes in the kitchen, nothing to suggest life.
He rose slowly, like lifting from a grave, every joint resisting.
The tooth slipped from his fingers and rolled in a small arc before stopping just shy of the doorframe, as if afraid to pass into the hallway.
He stepped over it.
Each footfall was too loud.
The floor groaned under his weight as though disapproving.
The narrow corridor leading to the living room stretched out longer than he remembered, warped and uneven like a dream slipping into a nightmare.
The lights flickered. Once. Twice.
And then steadied, humming faintly like a breath held in fear.
The living room was empty.
Or at least, it should have been.
The couch had been dragged slightly out of place, its legs leaving small scrapes across the floor like claw marks.
The coffee table was missing one of its legs, but it stood upright, unnaturally balanced.
On top of it sat a plate, and on the plate, laid out neatly like a school lunch, were three small pieces of meat, glazed with something dark and congealed.
Flies buzzed lazily around it, wings brittle, legs twitching.
The smell was worse now, sharp, chemical, with a sweetness that turned his stomach.
And then the sound came again.
Another creak, not from the hallway this time, but from the bathroom door.
Slowly, it swung inward.
Taejun turned toward it, heart trying to punch its way out through his ribs.
The light inside was dim and greenish, flickering like a dying memory.
He saw the silhouette first, a long shadow against the tiled wall, hunched and twitching, something was crouched over the sink.
It was his brother.
He recognized his hair, not too long and slightly curled at the ends, and the frilly hem of her house dress, but he wasn't moving right.
His back rose and fell too fast. His shoulders jerked in small spasms.
Water dripped from his arms, trailing red.
One hand gripped the edge of the sink so tightly the knuckles shone white.
The other was buried inside his mouth, fingers trembling, as if he were trying to dig something out.
He stepped forward. "Hyung…?"
He froze. His head turned, but not all the way. Just enough that he saw part of his face in the mirror.
His jaw was unhinged. Loose and swinging.
His eyes were too wide, red-veined and unfocused, the skin under them swollen and raw like he'd been crying for hours.
He made a noise, wet and gurgling, then smiled.
The sound of skin tearing filled the room.
He was pulling something out of her throat.
He staggered back, hit the wall, and nearly tripped over his feet.
He turned fully then, hand dripping, wrist cut open where his teeth had dug into the flesh, and held out a bundle of what looked like hair.
Long strands, soaked and black, tangled with bits of skin, torn fingernails, and something pale that might have been a sliver of scalp.
He stepped toward him, one leg dragging.
His feet left bloody prints on the tile, each one smearing behind him like a trail.
"Look what I found," he whispered, but it wasn't his voice. It was too deep, as if someone else was wearing her throat like a puppet. "Look what you brought home."
Taejun ran.
He didn't think, didn't even look back.
His body finally obeyed him, pumping fear through his limbs like gasoline.
He bolted through the kitchen, past the overturned chair, past the meat plate, toward the front door.
It was shut now.
He clawed at the lock, fingers slippery with sweat.
The bolt wouldn't budge.
He yanked and slammed his shoulder against it.
Behind him, his footsteps came slowly.
The thing pretending to be his brother began to hum.
A soft school song.
The same one they sang that morning in the classroom.