The school gates came into view like monuments to routine, tall and bland against the overcast sky, their metal frames slick with a fine coat of moisture that clung to everything this morning, including the hems of passing uniforms and the rough bark of the old trees standing guard near the perimeter.
Around them, children trickled in from various directions, chatting in clumps about games, teachers, and weekend cartoons, their voices bright and unconcerned, blending into a warm, collective hum of life that might have reassured someone else, but for Taejun, it only deepened the wrongness.
Every sound seemed just slightly too polished, every laugh ringing out with mechanical familiarity, like the soundtrack of a scene being replayed too perfectly, over and over, until its comfort frayed into something hollow and recursive.
The rhythm of shoes on pavement, the crinkle of snack wrappers, the casual teasing, they all layered upon each other with a maddening uniformity, and beneath them pulsed a silence that no one else seemed to hear, a silence stitched into the cracks of normalcy where something unspoken waited to unfold.
He walked past the gate like a puppet resuming a role he no longer believed in, his limbs moving with stiff mimicry, the practiced nods and mechanical smiles he offered to passing classmates serving only to heighten his disconnection, as though he were watching himself from somewhere just behind his own eyes.
The air inside the school building hit him with a dry, artificial warmth laced with familiar scents, old mop water, disinfectant, aging textbooks, whiteboard marker, and that distinct underlying trace of dust long settled into the seams of walls and ceiling tiles.
Once, that smell might have grounded him, anchored him in the comfort of repetition and the illusion of safety, but now it struck him as the odor of something preserved too long, like a room sealed off from the world where time refused to move forward.
With each step deeper into the hall, his thoughts returned to that soaked figure across the street, the voice that didn't belong in the living world, the soft and broken plea still lodged beneath his skin like a sliver of glass.
"Help me."
The words hadn't come from outside him, not anymore.
They echoed inward now, in the fragile space between thoughts, like a memory he never lived but couldn't un-remember.
When he reached his classroom, he barely registered the usual buzz of chairs shifting and friends talking over each other, and when he sat at his desk, the movement felt disconnected, his fingers moving automatically to unzip his backpack and extract the textbook he had no intention of reading.
He opened it anyway, stared down at the words he had seen a dozen times before, and found them completely alien, their neat rows of Hangul drifting slightly at the corners of his vision as though they were written beneath a layer of thick, rippling water.
Around him, the class filled slowly, a girl brushing dust off her chair, a boy dropping his pen cap and whispering a curse, the faint click of the old fan above the board rotating uselessly against the stale air, but Taejun heard it all from a distance, as if submerged.
Someone pulled out the chair beside him and sat down with the usual metallic scrape and soft grunt of shifting weight, but he didn't turn to see who it was.
He didn't have to, he wasn't afraid of who might be there; he was afraid that he already knew.
It wasn't the fear of violence or some cinematic ghost clawing through the veil, but the quieter, more unbearable terror of recognition, the certainty that she had left something behind, something invisible and irreversible, and now it had taken root in him.
He didn't see her in the room, not physically, but she lingered all the same, not as an image but as a sensation, the damp chill of her presence, the weight of her broken stare, the memory of her voice as it dissolved into the air like steam over cold tile.
She wasn't angry, she wasn't malicious, she was there, ruined and forgotten, abandoned so long ago that even her grief had eroded into silence.
When Ms. Jang entered the room, her usual brisk pace and clipped tone rang through the space with the energy of someone determined to impose order, whether the class wanted it or not.
"Alright, everyone! Eyes up and open your books! We're jumping right into the unit today, no delays!"
Her voice bounced against the walls like a tennis ball, and students groaned in unison, rustling papers and clicking pens in protest, their annoyance harmless, predictable, and oddly comforting in its mundane rhythm.
Taejun moved with them, flipping to the correct page, lifting his pencil, pretending to care, but her attention was like breath on glass, there for a second before fading.
The teacher's voice became a background drone, the room no longer a space of learning but a theater set, and somewhere in the far corner of her mind, she could still hear her voice, as steady and mournful as an old music box winding down beneath layers of dust.
The second-story windows offered a view of the front yard and the crooked tree near the school gate, and though Taejun knew better than to look, knew, somehow, that acknowledging the world outside would only tighten the knot inside him, his eyes drifted there anyway.
And for the smallest possible instant, less than a blink, something appeared beneath the tree.
It didn't move, it didn't wave, it simply stood, dark and precise, cut sharply against the grey trunk like a shadow too solid to be cast by anything human.
There was no face, no movement, just presence.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, a flicker erased by logic and wind, and the leaves resumed their harmless trembling as if nothing had ever stood there at all.
He returned his gaze to the front, but something shifted in his periphery, not in the window, not in the classroom, but inside the space he had once thought of as safe.
A sound, faint and irregular, came from beneath his desk, a delicate brushing, almost like the whisper of cloth against paper.
His breath caught, and he leaned down slowly, fingers moving as though drawn by someone else's will.
He unzipped the front pocket of his bag and reached inside, expecting the usual mess of school supplies, erasers, notes, a folded worksheet, maybe a candy wrapper, but instead, his hand closed around something thin, soft-edged, and slightly damp.
It was a note.
Not one he remembered writing.
Not one he remembered receiving.
Folded once, cleanly, and soaked just enough at the corners to warp the paper's edge, it felt almost warm in his palm, as though it had been held just moments before.
His heart pressed upward against his throat as he unfolded it carefully, the paper soft in places where the moisture had weakened the grain, and what he saw inside did not resemble writing in any traditional sense.
There was no ink, no graphite, no marker, but the words were there, scorched directly into the flesh of the paper like a brand, the letters blackened and sunken into the fibers with a heat he could feel even now.
She remembers.
His breath was locked in his chest.
He stared at the message, unwilling to blink, as if closing his eyes would allow it to change, would make it disappear, would undo something that had already happened, but the words remained, etched not only into the paper but into something far deeper, and he felt, with a sudden certainty that hollowed him from the inside out, that the message had not been placed there to warn him, it had been placed there to remind him.
Around him, the world hadn't shifted.
The teacher's voice continued without hesitation.
The students took notes, whispered, and tapped their pens against the desk in idle rhythms.
No one noticed, no one saw, no one felt the pressure drop in the room or the slight chill in the air or the way Taejun sat motionless, holding a note that had no earthly origin.
He crumpled it quickly, not to destroy it but to contain it, and shoved it back into the depths of his backpack with fingers that trembled just slightly, their nerves misfiring beneath skin that felt far too cold for the season.
He didn't move again, he didn't look around, he stared down at the textbook in front of him, now completely illegible, every line of it nothing more than noise behind his eyes, because he understood now, finally and fully, that this wasn't over, not even close.
She hadn't let go, she hadn't vanished, she had followed him?
And whatever had begun on that street, in that rain-soaked silence, wasn't finished, not until he remembered.
It wasn't until after lunch that the day began to curdle, its surface tension breaking with a slow, imperceptible shift that no one seemed to notice at first, no one except Taejun.
The clouds outside had thickened into a pale, oppressive ceiling, casting a jaundiced sheen across the classroom walls, turning every reflection on glass or tile into something murky and bruised.
The once-joyful chatter of the midday break had already thinned to a soft murmur as students drifted back into their seats, still chewing the last bites of rice balls and convenience store bread, their voices quieter now, eyes half-lidded from digestion and boredom, laughter echoing weakly in the hallway like memories already dissolving.
Even the light felt wrong, not dim, exactly, but muted, as if the sky had pressed a cold palm to the windows and told the room to hush.
Taejun sat motionless at his desk, fingers laced loosely in front of him, posture unchanging, his eyes pointed forward but seeing nothing that belonged to the classroom.
The note remained hidden deep in his bag, folded along softened creases, stained faintly at the corners, and though he hadn't dared unfold it again, the words inside continued to echo in his mind with quiet insistence, as if memorized by a part of him he couldn't reach.
She remembers.
That message hadn't faded with time or distance, if anything, it had sharpened, its presence growing clearer the longer he tried to forget it.
He had told no one, not about the soaked figure across the street, not about the voice, not even now, as his chest tightened with that slow, spreading pressure, the distinct sensation of being watched, not from within the room, but from somewhere behind the walls of reality itself.
He kept his silence, even as the temperature in the classroom felt colder than it should have been, even when the teacher's voice during math began to warp around the edges, not distorted in volume, but blurred in focus, like a radio losing its station, the lesson breaking apart beneath a faint humming that seemed to rise from nowhere.
It wasn't the ceiling lights, it wasn't the fans, it was too deep, too strange, almost subsonic, vibrating along the bones of the building, or maybe beneath the floors themselves.
No one else reacted, no one flinched or asked if something was wrong, but Taejun could feel the sound like a breath against the back of his skull, low and slow and terrible.
Still, he said nothing, but someone else noticed.
"Ugh… what's that smell?"
The words came suddenly, too loud for the murmur of the room, sharp and raw in their confusion.
Jiwoo— the girl who always sat by the window, had wrinkled her nose and pushed herself halfway out of her chair, eyes squinting, fingers waving uselessly in front of her face.
There was laughter at first, light and dismissive, the kind that kids offer when they think something gross is funny.
One boy near the front snorted and asked, "What smell?" while others leaned forward in curiosity, turning their heads, sniffing at the air with exaggerated grimaces.
Jiwoo didn't laugh.
Her brows knit together as her face shifted from disgust to unease. "It's like… mildew or something," she muttered, her voice quieter now, almost unsure. "No. Not mildew. It's like…"
She paused, sniffed again. "Old water. Like something left out too long. Like a bucket in a basement or… a sink no one uses."
The room stirred with confusion, students glancing at one another, their amusement draining into mild concern, the scent now creeping faintly into awareness, not strong, but present, like the ghost of something wet and long forgotten.
Taejun's stomach turned to stone.
He knew that smell.
He had known it from the first breath he took that morning, standing frozen on the sidewalk as rainwater ran into his socks, staring at the figure across the street.
It was the scent that had clung to her, the smell of soaked silk and decay, of time abandoned in a place where memory could no longer breathe.
The teacher, visibly annoyed at the interruption, waved the issue off with an impatient gesture, muttering something about maybe it being the janitor's mop water, and told Jiwoo to sit down and focus.
But Jiwoo didn't move.
She stood fully now, her face several shades paler, the corners of her mouth trembling not with confusion anymore, but with something quieter and more primal.
Her gaze had drifted past the desks and beyond the classroom walls, no longer focused on her classmates, not even on the smell, but on something just outside the glass.
"Wait…" she whispered, barely audible, taking a single step backward as though the floor beneath her had shifted. "Wait, there's…"
Her voice cracked. "There's someone…"
The classroom paused in a collective breath.
A boy laughed nervously and asked if it was another bird. Last week, one had flown into the window and smacked against it hard enough to leave feathers. Still, Jiwoo shook her head violently, arms tightening around herself, mouth working without sound at first until finally, in a trembling rush, she said, "No. No, no, no—"
Her hands rose as if to shield herself from something unseen. "There's someone… standing… by the ditch."
Taejun turned his head before his body could stop him.
Outside the window, the schoolyard sat quiet and still.
The breeze had gone still, the leaves unmoving, and not a single bird or student wandered through the empty concrete expanse, but far across the yard, near the edge of the gym wall where the overgrown drainage ditch cut through a clump of weeds, something stood, something tall, something thin, something clad in white.
A dress, soaked and clinging.
She was standing.
From this distance, details were hard to make out, the fog on the window distorted her slightly, and the distance softened her into the shapes of a dream, but Taejun felt no uncertainty.
He knew, even from here. He knew.
The fabric sagged with moisture, draping her figure like a second skin, the hem motionless despite the absence of wind, and her arms hung limply at her sides as though her limbs had forgotten what they were meant to do.
And then, slowly, with the mechanical precision of something not quite alive, the figure lifted her head.
Not at him, at Jiwoo.
Taejun didn't hear the scream, not at first.
There was only the metallic crash of a chair collapsing against the tile as Jiwoo stumbled back, her mouth open in a voiceless gasp, her back colliding hard with the classroom wall, and then the sound came, torn from her lungs in a jagged shriek that pierced the stunned silence like a needle through soft flesh.
And then, with a deafening crack, the window beside her shattered inward, the glass erupting in a burst of shards that rained across desks and skin and scattered papers into chaos.
Children screamed, desks were knocked over, and someone hit the floor.
The air filled with a sudden cold, sharp gust that smelled unmistakably of wet stone and lilies left too long in water.
Jiwoo was screaming, her arms thrown over her face, her body crumpled in the corner, and the teacher's voice was drowned beneath the panic as every child turned to see what had come through the glass.
But there was nothing there.
No shadow on the field, no wet footprints on the tile, no figure standing outside waiting to be seen.
Just the faint whistle of air moving where the window had been, and the unmistakable trace of lilies, damp and sickly-sweet, hanging in the room like a funeral gift left too long beneath the sun.
Taejun didn't speak.
He stared at the jagged edge of the broken glass, heart pounding so hard he thought it might split his ribs open, and felt, with the same clarity he'd felt all day, that this was only the beginning.
That she had seen Jiwoo.
That she was choosing now, and that next time, the glass wouldn't be what shattered.