The day dragged on, wearing the same mask of normalcy that Taejun had learned to accept, or at least pretend to.
Each hour passed like clockwork: the buzz of fluorescent lights, the scrape of chairs, the low hum of half-interested students murmuring answers or laughing at things that felt too far away to matter.
Taejun moved through it all like someone underwater, slow and invisible, eyes occasionally lifting to meet the world, but never long enough to touch it.
No one asked if he was all right.
No one noticed how many times his fingers tapped against his desk, or how often he glanced toward the window with that same soft ache in his chest.
The shadow never came back.
No one else had seen it.
No one else had felt it.
And so, by unspoken rule, it became something that hadn't happened, something he imagined, perhaps.
A half-formed daydream stirred by boredom or too much light.
That's what the world around him seemed to say, without saying anything at all.
By the time the final bell rang, the classroom burst back to life, chairs scraping back, backpacks zipping, voices rising in excited flurries.
Taejun gathered his things slowly.
He didn't rush to leave, nor did he linger.
He moved with the tide, a quiet presence among so many others, forgotten almost as quickly as he was seen.
Outside, the school grounds were bathed in the warm, melting light of late afternoon.
Everything looked softer than it had that morning, the pavement glowing with streaks of sun, the leaves catching golden highlights, the air filled with the distant scent of fried snacks from a nearby stall.
A group of kids raced past him on scooters, their laughter carrying behind them like kites in the breeze.
Somewhere near the gym, a few older students were still lingering, trading snacks and teasing each other about homework or weekend plans.
Taejun didn't stop to join anyone.
He walked out of the gate.
Down the gentle slope past the familiar row of vending machines.
Past the corner where the neighborhood cat sometimes curled up on a motorbike seat.
His steps were light, unhurried, as though he was moving through the pages of an old photo album.
When he reached the crossroads, that familiar point where the school roads blurred into quiet residential alleys, the world around him had grown noticeably quieter.
A soft hush had begun to settle over everything.
The sky, painted in bands of amber, peach, and lavender, stretched wide above him like something impossibly kind.
Windows in apartment buildings reflected the colors, glowing gently in their square frames.
He waited at the crosswalk, hands in his pockets, chin tilted slightly toward the breeze.
The light was still red.
He didn't mind.
A few other people passed him, a mother tugging along a small child, a boy with headphones bobbing his head to music only he could hear, a girl tapping on her phone as she crossed in the opposite direction, but none of them looked at him, none of them slowed down, and that was fine, too.
Taejun closed his eyes briefly, letting the wind brush against his cheeks.
It smelled faintly of pavement, tree bark, and something sweet drifting from a bakery several blocks down, old bread maybe, or something sugar-glazed and waiting behind glass.
The moment held there, soft and silent, as though the world had offered him a pause button no one else could touch.
When the light turned green, he stepped forward.
The sidewalk was warm underfoot, still holding onto the day's heat.
Each step echoed gently beneath him, the sound mingling with distant traffic and the calls of birds settling in for the night.
He passed the small stationery shop where the window always had a rotating display of glitter pens and cartoon erasers.
The lights were off now.
A handwritten sign said "Closed early — see you tomorrow!" in cheerful red ink.
The neighborhood grew quieter the deeper he went, just the steady rhythm of his breathing, the muted scuff of shoes against concrete, and the distant rustle of wind through narrow trees lining the alley.
His mind wandered again, circling back to the classroom, to the shape at the edge of the trees.
It felt less threatening now, more like a mystery half-lost to memory.
Maybe it hadn't been real, or maybe it had, he didn't know anymore.
But he remembered the weight of its stare.
Even now, long after the moment had passed, he could still feel the echo of it, like a stone dropped in a deep well, rippling long after the splash had faded.
Yet nothing followed him.
Nothing lingered behind the fences or rooftops, just rooftops, windows, and silence.
The world wore its evening skin, and all its shadows felt ordinary again.
Taejun adjusted the strap of his backpack and glanced up at the sky once more.
It was beautiful.
Not in any dramatic way, just in the quiet, unshouted way that sunsets often were.
A kind of beauty that didn't need to be noticed to exist.
He kept walking.
And for a little while, the ache in his chest softened, not gone, but folded away, carried gently, like something he could hold without breaking.
Tomorrow would come, another bell, another classroom, another glance out the window.
But for now, the road was his, and the light was kind.
And in that stare, something ancient and wrong seemed to crawl beneath Taejun's skin, a pressure that built behind his eyes, as though he were being pulled forward, not by force, but by the sheer weight of her presence.
Every instinct screamed for him to run, to turn back the way he came and vanish into the twilight like it had all been a mistake, but his feet wouldn't move, not away, not toward.
They remained pinned, tethered to the cracked pavement as though the earth itself had decided to hold him still.
The air had shifted.
The distant cooking smoke no longer smelled of food; it had turned bitter, acrid, like something burnt long ago and left to rot in memory.
The breeze no longer cooled.
It pressed cold fingers against his spine, whispering warnings he couldn't understand, and still she stared.
Her black eyes didn't flicker, didn't blink, they drank him in, not with hatred, not even with malice, but with something colder, something hollow, like a grief that had long since passed, screaming and now lived only in silence.
She didn't belong to the world around her.
The golden light of the sunset refused to touch her skin, casting no warm glow across her face, only deepening the pallor of her grey flesh.
Even her shadow on the ground looked odd, too sharp, too still, as if cut from another dimension and pasted onto this one.
The longer Taejun looked, the more certain he became that she hadn't walked there, hadn't come from anywhere.
She had appeared, as though pulled through a seam in the air.
And something in her expression wasn't blank.
There was a sorrow there, buried deep beneath the void of her eyes, a sorrow so old it had gone fossil.
Her mouth remained open, parted in that almost-whisper, and for a split second, Taejun could have sworn he heard something: a breathless scrape, a broken hush, like words that had forgotten how to be spoken.
He couldn't stop shaking.
His hand inched toward the strap of his backpack, fingers numb, as if grasping it would tether him to something real.
The street behind him was still empty.
The slow tick of his pulse in his ears, and the growing certainty that if he made a sound, any sound, she might respond.
He didn't know what would happen then.
Whether she would vanish, scream, or come closer.
He didn't want to find out.
So he did the only thing he could.
He stepped backward, slowly, carefully.
Her eyes followed.
Not her head, not her body.
Just her eyes.
They slid in their sockets, impossibly slow and fluid, never blinking, never twitching.
It was like watching ink flow across paper, trailing toward him, marking him.
And when he reached the corner of the fence, barely out of sight, he turned and ran.
Not too fast, just enough to leave her behind, just enough to breathe again.
He didn't look back, because something told him that if he did, she'd be closer.
But Taejun couldn't shake it.
The image of her, motionless at the neighbor's gate, her eyes like holes that cut through space, lingered like smoke in the corners of his vision, refusing to dissipate even as the lights came on and the world tried to settle into its nightly rhythm.
He stood at the kitchen sink, glass in hand, and stared into the shallow reflection in the darkened window.
His face blinked back at him, faint and wavering, but part of him expected another shape to appear behind it.
A pale face, white dress, a mouth still parted, as if waiting to speak.
He closed his eyes.
Get a grip.
The water tasted metallic and flat, but he drank it anyway, then rinsed the glass and set it quietly in the drying rack.
Every movement felt slightly too rehearsed, as though mimicking a routine rather than living in it.
Upstairs, the light in the hallway flickered faintly once, then steadied.
The house creaked, the same way it always did as it cooled, but now it felt louder, unfamiliar.
He left the kitchen and walked to the living room, flipping through the TV channels out of habit, not watching.
The screen changed from news to cartoons to some old rerun drama, but none of it registered, just the sound, keeping him company, keeping out the silence.
Eventually, he grabbed a blanket from the couch and wrapped it around himself, curling up against the cushions.
The room dimmed around him, the only light coming from the flicker of the screen, shadows playing softly on the walls.
Somewhere outside, a car drove past.
A dog barked.
And yet, when he glanced at the curtain, he thought he saw a shift in the fabric, a slight tremble, as though something had passed near it.
He stared at it for a long time after that, unmoving.
Eventually, night swallowed the last of the orange sky.
The house lay quiet.
The ghost didn't knock, she didn't scream, she didn't call his name in a voice that belonged to someone long dead.
She just stood there, or didn't.
By morning, maybe she'd be gone.
Just maybe.
The soft clink of the glass echoed in the quiet kitchen as Taejun poured himself a drink of water.
The chill of it steadied him, a small, mundane comfort against the lingering unease that clung to his skin like cold mist.
He stood there a while, sipping slowly, letting the low hum of the refrigerator and the measured tick of the wall clock stretch through the silence like a lullaby.
Then, from upstairs, the sound of footsteps.
The light rhythm of someone walking barefoot on old wooden floors.
"Taejun?" a voice called, light and sleepy, softened by the comfort of blankets and twilight dreams.
Taejun smiled faintly, the tension in his shoulders easing.
"Yeah," he called back, setting the glass in the sink. "It's me."
He climbed the short staircase, each step creaking underfoot, and turned into the bedroom they shared.
There, surrounded by a flurry of colored pencils and scattered paper, sat his brother, Shin Haneul, cross-legged on the floor, his hair a sleepy mess, his cheeks faintly pink from resting on his arm.
"You're home late," Haneul said, squinting up at him. "Did you stop somewhere other than home?"
Taejun ruffled his brother's hair in passing. "I... just walked slower than usual. That's all. There's nothing to worry about, Hyung."
Haneul raised an eyebrow, unconvinced but too tired to press.
"I was waiting for you. You said we'd finish the last episode of 'The World in the End'."
"I didn't forget, hyung. I couldn't," Taejun said, already peeling off his uniform and slipping into the soft familiarity of a sweatshirt and lounge pants.
He lowered himself beside Haneul, glancing at the paper kingdom spilled across the floor. "You made all these today?"
"Mm-hmm." Haneul held one up proudly, a jagged spire floating among clouds, streaked with colored pencil sunbeams.
"That's the sky kingdom. And that's the prince. He can fly for your information... but he can only do that when he's sad."
Taejun paused, amused. "Why only when he's sad?"
Haneul shrugged, unfazed. "I dunno. Maybe to make it more dramatic."
They both laughed, that kind of unforced, quiet laughter that made a house feel less like walls and more like home.
Taejun helped him stack the papers, careful not to smudge anything, and then opened the small laptop on the low table between them.
The familiar theme song played, sweeping strings and echoed vocals filling the room like a portal opening.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, legs tucked in, the glow of the screen painting their faces gold and blue.
They barely spoke, only traded the occasional whispered reaction, a gasp, a stifled laugh, a quiet "No way."
At some point, Haneul leaned in, head brushing Taejun's arm, a small yawn betraying his effort to stay awake.
By the time the end credits rolled, the world outside had deepened into indigo.
Stars pricked through the sky one by one, like tiny promises.
And whatever had waited at the edge of the street, whatever had stood still with that hollow stare, was far away now, forgotten, for the moment.
This, the warmth of the room, the smell of soap and paper, the soft presence of someone who trusted you completely, this was what home was.
Taejun rubbed his eyes. "Can we watch one more time?"
Haneul checked the clock, then gave him a gentle nudge. "Not unless you want to be a zombie in class tomorrow."
Taejun groaned and collapsed onto a pillow with theatrical despair.
Haneul chuckled, shutting the laptop and rising to flick off the lights.
Darkness settled in, soft and forgiving.
The two boys lay in their corners of the room, the air still holding the warmth of shared laughter and flickering screens.
Outside, the street was quiet.
The wind moved without shape, no figures lingered at the gates, no eyes watched.
Just the hum of distant traffic, the rustle of leaves, and the steady breathing of two brothers wrapped in peace.