The morning came without sunlight, just a dull grey seep that filtered through the torn curtains like ash drifting in from a far-off fire.
Taejun lay on the splintered wooden floor, curled in an uncomfortable half-fetal sprawl, the cold pressing against his back through the thin fabric of his shirt.
The room reeked of dust, mildew, and a vaguely metallic odor, one that clung to the walls as if it had been festering there for years.
Strewn clothing, crumpled papers, and overturned furniture gave the house the appearance of an abandoned rat's nest, and not a home meant to shelter human beings.
Cobwebs drooped from the ceiling corners like limp, grey flags mourning a long-dead country.
He blinked up at the cracked ceiling, dry-mouthed and still disoriented from sleep.
For a few seconds, he felt paralyzed, the kind of stillness where you're not quite sure if you're awake or still dreaming.
Then he sighed, a long, empty breath that felt heavier than it should have, and dragged himself upright, rubbing his eyes.
His limbs moved stiffly as he stumbled over trash and dirty laundry in search of his school uniform, which he found crumpled behind a chair with something sticky staining the sleeve.
He didn't bother showering.
The thought didn't even cross his mind.
The pipes barely worked anymore, and the idea of warm water was as distant as a fairy tale.
Shuffling toward the hallway, he scratched his scalp absently, still half-asleep.
"Oh…" he muttered, frowning slightly as the silence pressed down harder.
"Where's breakfast…? No, wait… where's Hyung?"
He stood in the middle of the corridor, disoriented and squinting toward the kitchen like it might answer him.
A strange chill ran up his spine, and he swallowed hard.
"Maybe he already left for work," he mumbled, but the words sounded uncertain even to his ears.
The kitchen was empty, the sink full of crusted dishes, the counters stained with forgotten spills, flies buzzing lazily over an untouched bowl of rotting rice from the day before.
The stove was cold.
No rice cooker light, no smell of soup, no rustle of someone moving around, just silence.
"How could he not wake me up?" he said, his voice tightening with irritation.
"And there's not even any food…!"
His face contorted into an angry pout as he stomped toward the door, the boards beneath his feet groaning like they were protesting his every step.
But even as he moved, something about the silence felt wrong.
It wasn't just quiet, it was too quiet.
Not even the usual creak of the fridge, not the hum of the electricity.
The whole house felt... dead.
He paused, hand on the doorknob, and for a brief moment, he thought he saw a shape at the corner of his vision, just at the edge of the hallway, near the bathroom door.
It looked like a leg, or a shadow, but when he snapped his head that way, nothing was there.
The floor creaked behind him.
He didn't turn around.
He just gritted his teeth, yanked the door open, and stormed outside, trying to pretend he wasn't breathing faster, trying to ignore the feeling that something had been standing behind him the whole time.
He slipped on his usual shoes, mud-caked, frayed at the edges, the soles worn so thin that every jagged crack on the pavement would bite through if he stepped too hard.
The laces were uneven, stiff with old dirt, but he didn't care.
He didn't even bother to tie them properly, with a stiff grunt, he pushed the door open.
The hinges groaned, long and slow, like the house itself was reluctant to let him go.
Before stepping out, he mumbled under his breath, "See you later…" though no one was there to hear it.
The words felt strange leaving his mouth, like something he'd been programmed to say, not something he meant.
Outside, the air hit him with a sharp, biting dampness.
Not cold exactly, but still enough to prickle his skin and make his shirt cling unpleasantly to his back.
The sky was the same color as dishwater, low-hanging and heavy, like it might collapse if you looked up too long.
The street was empty, not a single soul, not even the usual old man who sat smoking outside the corner store, no passing bikes, no morning chatter, just rows of dull buildings with windows like blank eyes watching him in silence.
He walked the same path he always took, the one that curved around the wilted hedges, across the cracked pedestrian bridge, past the trash bins that always overflowed no matter what day it was.
His steps echoed a little too loudly, too alone.
With each footfall, a dull thud against wet concrete, he started muttering, his voice low and bitter, words spilling out more like complaints than thoughts.
"Tch… can't believe Hyung just left like that… didn't even say anything," he grumbled, kicking a loose rock across the sidewalk.
"No food. Not even an egg. Who forgets their own brother? Who just leaves the house looking like a trash pit and doesn't bother waking me up? At least he should've left me a note or something. Ugh!"
He scowled at nothing, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
"Everyone's gonna stare again… Just like last time. I bet they'll talk behind my back. Like always."
His voice cracked slightly near the end, but he didn't stop.
The words kept flowing, more venomous with each step.
"I hate this place. I hate to walk like this. I hate that stupid house. I hate—"
He froze, just for a second.
He thought he heard footsteps behind him, quick, scuttling, and then gone.
He spun around, heart in his throat, nothing, just the empty path stretching behind him like a gaping mouth.
He stared for a long time at no one, nothing.
He muttered again, quieter this time. "Tch… probably just a rat…"
But his pace quickened, and now when he walked, he didn't just mutter.
He kept glancing behind him every few steps.
The silence wasn't just empty anymore.
It felt like something was filling it, like something was following.
He tilted his head upward, squinting at the sky as a damp breeze swept past, cold enough to sting his eyes.
The clouds above churned like something alive, dark and bloated, a heavy, heaving mass stretched across the heavens, twisting in slow motion like a wave turned inside out, no sunlight, no hint of warmth, just that sickly grey, the kind that made everything beneath it look drained of color, as if the world itself had been exhaled and left to fade.
He reached the familiar crossroad, the last checkpoint before the path turned and led down to the school gates.
The pavement here was cracked in spiderweb patterns, worn from years of rain and footsteps, and at the corner where the sidewalk met the curb, grime pooled in the indentations like stagnant blood.
Across the intersection, on the opposite side, there was a small crowd gathered.
People of no clear purpose, lingering as if frozen in thought.
Some stared blankly up at the pedestrian light, waiting without urgency.
Others were turned slightly away, not speaking, just standing with their heads bowed or their eyes distant, as though they had forgotten why they were there.
One woman stood with a stroller, but there was no baby inside, just a blanket folded over the edge, unmoving.
A man beside her clutched a briefcase with white knuckles, lips parted like he wanted to speak but had forgotten how.
Another figure, farther back, seemed to tremble, not visibly, but in some deeper, inner way, like they were on the edge of a scream they weren't allowed to release.
On Taejun's side of the street, there was no one else but him and an old man a few paces away, slowly inching forward on a cane.
His walking stick was carved in the old style, with a curved, worn handle that looked like it had passed through generations of hands.
The man moved like a marionette whose strings were unraveling, every shuffle of his feet sounding more like a drag than a step.
His face was gaunt, buried beneath the brim of a sun-bleached hat, and though he never looked up, Taejun had the eerie sense that the old man knew he was being watched.
The wind stirred again, this time colder, slicing down the alleyways and flapping the corners of signs.
Somewhere, a loose shutter slammed in the distance.
The crowd across the street didn't flinch.
They just stood there, silent, inert, like wax figures left under stormlight.
Taejun furrowed his brow, clutching the straps of his bag a little tighter.
Something was wrong.
The streetlight above the crosswalk flickered, once, twice, and then held red.
No one moved, no one crossed, not even the light changed after that, just the red, glaring defiantly against the grey sky like a warning left unanswered.
He swallowed and took a step back, his breath fogging faintly in front of him.
This wasn't right.
And yet the school was just down the road, just past the crosswalk, just a few more minutes.
Still, his legs felt heavier than they should, and the old man's cane tapped once more against the concrete, slow, deliberate, like a clock counting down to something no one wanted to meet.
Without realizing it, Taejun's eyes had begun to close, the way they sometimes did in class when the warmth of the room and the hum of nothingness lulled him into that strange, weightless place between waking and sleep.
He wasn't even sure when he had started nodding off.
The cold air had numbed his cheeks, the silence stretched so long it became a kind of lullaby, and the static red light above pulsed like a heartbeat set to a dying rhythm.
When his awareness returned, it wasn't sudden.
It crept back in fragments, the shifting sound of leaves, the faint thud of a footstep, the sensation that time had passed without him.
He blinked hard and straightened, disoriented.
Something had changed.
His side of the crosswalk was now empty.
The old man with the cane was gone, not a trace, not even the tap of wood against pavement echoing into the distance.
Taejun turned his head sharply, searching, but there was no sign of anyone.
Just him, alone.
Across the street, however, the crowd remained, but now they were packed tighter, pressed shoulder to shoulder, unmoving and silent.
Yet they didn't feel like people anymore, not quite.
Something about the way they stood, still and rigid, as if they were waiting for something, or someone.
And then he saw it.
It stood amidst the figures, towering over them like a monument erected in defiance of natural order, an entity nearly eight feet tall, its proportions stretched into something inhuman.
It was cloaked in layers of long, flowing black garments that didn't quite behave like fabric.
It trailed downward, unraveling into tendrils and wisps of shadow that licked the air and flickered like dying flames.
The edges of its robes didn't touch the ground; they dissolved into darkness, as if the creature was being devoured by the void even as it stood whole.
Upon its head sat a broad-brimmed, pointed hat, casting unnatural shadows across its upper body.
The silhouette evoked something occult, something born from forgotten rites and sealed tomes, ritualistic and wrong, like an echo of a god that shouldn't exist.
The brim obscured most of its face, but what was visible was far worse than concealment: an impossibly smooth blankness, broken only by two glowing red eyes that glared through the grey air like burning coals submerged in blood.
There was no mouth, no nose, no features, just that void where a face should have been, and yet those eyes watched him.
More eyes began to bloom.
First in the air behind it, small, swirling red orbs with spiraling pupils that turned inwards and outwards at once, as if trying to pull reality apart.
Then on its body, embedded into the folds of its cloak, each lidless and twitching, rolling, watching from different angles, dozens of them, each blinkless, each trained on Taejun.
And then came the smiles.
Twisting grins began to manifest across its chest and shoulders, jagged, toothy slashes like open wounds, bleeding with mockery and menace.
One gaping mouth emerged in the center of its torso, lips parted in a grotesque grin, revealing black gums and needle-like teeth too many to count.
It didn't move, didn't open wider or speak, but it grinned with the kind of hunger that didn't need words.
The crowd around it didn't seem to notice, or perhaps they were frozen, trapped.
Each person stood locked in place, eyes glazed over, faces slack and empty, as though their minds had been scooped clean.
No one screamed.
The red pedestrian light above them still glowed, but it had begun to drip, long threads of crimson trailing down the pole like blood leaking from an unseen wound.
Taejun couldn't move.
His heart pounded in his ears like a war drum, but his limbs had gone cold.
The thing across the street tilted its head slowly, almost curiously, and its cloak hissed as it shifted.
From somewhere within its folds, more eyes opened, each locking onto him, locking into him.
A pulse of something unseen pressed against his skull, a whisper made of needles crawling under his skin, and in that breathless moment, he knew— It saw him.
Not as a passerby, not as a child, it saw him as chosen.