There was no morning down here.
Only the buzz of the naked bulb and the slow drip of water somewhere beyond sight.
Jihoon woke to that sound again, unsure whether he'd slept for hours or days. The rope around his wrists had bitten grooves into his skin; when he moved, the scabs cracked open.
He breathed. One. Two. Three. Still alive.
Footsteps.
The door creaked. The man in the white gloves entered first, followed by the woman who hummed and the one with cracked glasses and his eternal camera.
"Good morning," the gloved man said softly, as though politeness mattered.
Jihoon didn't answer. His voice had stopped working days ago.
Time lost all meaning.
Sometimes they asked questions he couldn't understand. Sometimes they didn't bother. The knife, the salt, the endless cycle of hurt and healing—it blurred until pain was just another color in the dark.
When the agony became too sharp, Jihoon laughed. It scared them at first, then amused them.
"Still laughing?" the humming woman said one day.
"It's funny," Jihoon murmured, his voice hoarse. "You think this will teach me something."
She tilted her head. "It will."
But days turned into weeks, then months. They stopped counting. He stopped resisting. Hunger, exhaustion, isolation—every human need turned to smoke. Words came out of his mouth without meaning. Sometimes he talked to the air, sometimes to his reflection in the damp wall.
"I can hear you," he whispered once, to nobody. "You're still there."
No voice answered. It was just the echo of his own delirium.
They continued.
He learned the rhythm of their cruelty: the hum, the questions, the light that flickered right before the blade. Each cycle predictable, almost comforting.
In that predictability, he found time.
Time to think.
Time to watch.
Time to plan.
When they weren't looking, he shifted his fingers—tiny, imperceptible movements—using a shard of metal he'd hidden weeks ago from a broken tray. Each night, he scraped at the wire binding his right wrist. Just one thread a day. No rush. No sound.
The body screamed. The mind adapted.
And somewhere along the line, fear died.
One night, the gloved man approached again. "He's quieter now," he said to the others. "Almost docile."
The woman smiled faintly. "Like a pet that finally understands its place."
The camera clicked.
Jihoon stared at the lens. His eyes were hollow, but behind the emptiness, something flickered—an ember that refused to die.
When the blade touched his skin again, he didn't flinch.
"Say something," the gloved man ordered.
Jihoon said nothing.
He waited until the man leaned closer. The hum filled the air.
Then—snap.
The wire gave way.
In a single motion, Jihoon's freed hand shot upward, grabbing the knife from the table. His movement was clumsy, weak—but fueled by months of fury. The blade sank into the man's shoulder.
The white gloves stained red.
The woman screamed; the camera clattered to the floor.
Jihoon moved on instinct, not grace. He didn't fight like a trained soldier, but like an animal that had finally chewed through its own trap. He struck, kicked, clawed—every motion driven by the simple, desperate command to end it.
The humming stopped forever. The camera went silent.
When it was done, he stood in the flickering light, chest heaving. The basement smelled of iron and dust. His hands shook, slick with blood and sweat.
They were gone. All of them.
For a long time, Jihoon didn't move.
He stared at his reflection in a piece of shattered glass on the floor. His face was pale, streaked with dirt, his eyes wild.
He laughed. A small, broken laugh that grew until it filled the room.
The sound didn't belong to a sane man—it belonged to someone who had seen the line between cruelty and survival and realized they were the same color.
He stumbled toward the door. His legs barely obeyed, but he forced them. Step after step, out of the basement, through a narrow corridor, into cold night air.
The world outside was quiet.
Wind brushed against his skin. The city lights glittered far away, oblivious.
He stood there, barefoot, trembling, staring at the stars like they were foreign objects.
Then he whispered the truth he had learned, the one carved into him by pain and time:
"Cruelty isn't born in monsters.
It's perfected in men."
He smiled—a quiet, hollow smile—and began to walk.
No destination.
No plan.
Just the sound of his footsteps and the echo of laughter fading into the night.