The house seemed to creak around them, slow and deliberate, as if the building itself listened, its breath rattling through decaying beams. Dust drifted down in slow spirals, disturbed by nothing visible, but descending as though the house exhaled with each word spoken.
Haneul's eyes narrowed, the weight inside his coat pressing harder against his ribs with every beat of his heart. The rod's presence was no longer a comfort. It was a tether. A debt. A reminder of what had been done long before tonight.
"You've already tried twisting me once," Haneul said, his voice barely louder than a breath, "and you failed."
Hyeonjae's expression didn't shift, but something in the room did. The cold deepened, not in temperature, but in sensation like stepping into a room that remembered grief far better than warmth.
"Failed?" Hyeonjae repeated, almost tenderly. "No, darling. I've only been patient from the start."
The light trembled, flickering for a moment as though something unseen had passed too close to its fragile glow.
Haneul kept the beam steady, forcing his hand not to shake, eyes locked onto the thing wearing the face of a boy long gone. His knuckles whitened beneath the fabric.
The rod pulsed once against his grip, as if acknowledging what was to come.
And neither of them moved.
The silence wrapped around them again, a suffocating pressure that seemed to coil around Haneul's ribs, squeezing until each breath tasted stale.
His fingers flexed around the rod beneath his coat, tracing those etched spirals as if they offered some crude anchor, though in truth, the object carried no comfort, only memory, and memory was a treacherous thing inside this place.
The walls moaned faintly, as though reacting to the tension, timber stretching against the weight of old sins that never rotted, no matter how much dust settled on them.
Overhead, unseen rafters shifted with a sound like bones adjusting themselves after a long, restless sleep.
Hyeonjae's voice unfurled again, disturbingly gentle, as if coaxing a wounded animal into a snare. "You still wear that face of defiance, even after everything this house whispered into your ears. After everything you've seen. After everything you've been. I wonder, Haneul— how many nights have you stood at his door? To listen. Afraid he might wake. More afraid he might not."
The name remained unspoken, but the weight of it pulsed between them like a raw nerve exposed. Taejun.
Haneul's jaw tightened, the muscle flickering once beneath his skin.
He dared not answer that bait, though the image rose involuntarily, the fragile rise and fall of his friend's chest under thin blankets, the way Taejun's small hand sometimes twitched in his sleep, reaching for comfort that never came.
"You don't belong here," Haneul said finally, each word dragged across his throat like broken glass. "That face… that voice… none of it belongs to you. Perhaps, maybe I'm the one who's seen your faces, and maybe this might be your real face. But to me, you are nothing but an empty cart rattling loudly."
Hyeonjae's head tilted again slowly like the motion of a marionette mimicking humanity without understanding its weight. His eyes reflected nothing but a shallow mockery of light. "And yet," he murmured, "here I sit. I am still wearing it and speaking through it. And you— you came back. Voluntarily. To me."
The light from Haneul's flashlight quivered again, though his grip remained steady. Around them, the shadows seemed to lean closer, as if eavesdropping on the fragile thread of their exchange.
The house exhaled once more, long and low, like something beneath the floorboards dragging itself closer to the surface.
"You came for him," Hyeonjae continued, voice falling even softer, curling like smoke into the dark spaces. "Or perhaps for yourself. It's hard to separate the two after all this time, isn't it? You carry both his weight and your own. But you never learned. This place doesn't care about burdens. It only cares about what you'll give up to escape them. Even if you understand, the house's not alive."
The rod pulsed again under Haneul's palm, steady now, almost eager, as though it too recognized how far they had descended tonight.
The markings etched into its surface seemed to throb faintly, reacting to the words, hungry to fulfill whatever purpose had once been carved into its cursed length.
"You think I fear losing myself to this place?" Haneul said quietly. "But I've already lost more than you can take. More than you can think of."
Hyeonjae's lips parted, revealing that inhuman grin once more, his teeth catching the weak beam of light like tiny polished stones. "And yet," he whispered, "you hold that rod like a prayer. You're not here to banish me. You're here to bargain."
The weight of those words struck harder than any threat, because beneath them lived a seed of truth. Bargains had already been made long ago. Desperate promises whispered in cold places. Silent pacts are agreed upon in the absence of witnesses.
Haneul's breathing slowed, becoming shallow as if each breath cost him something.
His hand flexed around the cloth-wrapped rod once more. "I'm here to end this, once and for all," he said, though the conviction in his voice scraped against the edges of weariness.
The figure seated before him made no move to rise, but the air shifted around Hyeonjae as though the house itself leaned closer in anticipation. "Endings are expensive, Haneul," he said softly. "Are you prepared to pay for his?"
Behind those words lay the unspoken question neither of them voiced aloud: What would be required this time? Blood? Memory? Or something far more irreversible?
A floorboard behind Haneul groaned, soft and slow, as though someone, something, had stepped closer from behind, though no breath touched his neck, no shadow crossed his shoulder.
The house was waking now, sensing the moment's approach, salivating in its quiet, patient way.
Still, Haneul did not turn. His eyes remained locked on the imitation of the boy he once knew, his grip firm around the pulsing rod that burned faintly beneath his coat like a second spine.
His voice, when it came, was little more than a whisper, but beneath it coiled years of grief, guilt, and rage sharpened into resolve.
"Whatever this house... no, he wants," Haneul said, "he won't get it. Until the last day of my life."
The silence that followed was not empty. It vibrated with the pulse of old things stirring.
And Hyeonjae smiled.
The smile on Hyeonjae's lips remained, frozen in place as though it had been etched there long before Haneul ever arrived, a cruel mask sculpted to mock any fragile certainty left inside him.
His eyes didn't blink; they simply remained fixed, not so much staring as piercing, skinning back layers of thought Haneul barely managed to keep intact.
The dim flashlight trembled faintly in Haneul's grip now, not from fear, but from the subtle tremor spreading through his arm, muscles taut under strain, nerves vibrating beneath his skin as though his own body was resisting the nearness of the imitation seated before him.
"You've gotten better at pretending," Hyeonjae murmured, the voice curling through the stagnant air like oil across water. "That old steadiness in your face. The way your hand doesn't shake as much. But I see it clearly. The fracture behind your eyes." His head tilted with the slow inevitability of a noose tightening. "You still want to carry it. The weight of what you left behind."
The rod pressed against Haneul's palm, warm and pulsing, almost eager now.
The etchings beneath the cloth seemed to shift, as though moving of their own accord beneath the thin barrier, twisting into patterns that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
It had always been like this when he approached; the rod recognized proximity, as though it had been designed for confrontation, drawn to those who wore borrowed faces.
He remembered when he first found it: buried beneath floorboards slick with mildew and rot, hidden in a chamber suffocating with the stench of long-decayed promises.
It hadn't been placed there by chance. No, someone before him had left it for this very meeting. Or perhaps for someone else entirely.
"You think you understand what I am?" Haneul whispered, voice dry, throat closing with each word that tried to push through the constriction of memory. "You're not him. You're not even close to being him."
Hyeonjae's grin widened, splitting his face unnaturally. "You say that because it's safer, isn't it? But you still see his eyes when you look at me. You still hear his voice when I speak. You want to deny it, but every part of you still hopes that, somehow, I might be him beneath it all. That maybe—" his voice dropped into a hushed rasp, "—he's not lost. Not like the others."
Haneul's stomach twisted, not from fear, but from the cruel precision of the words. He did see those familiar features.
The slope of his chin, the soft arch of his brow, the faint curve in his lips that once carried a genuine warmth during simpler years. But now those features were worn like a garment, loose, ill-fitting, stretched grotesquely over something that did not belong in this world.
"You wear his face," Haneul rasped, voice fraying. "But you don't know what it costs to keep him safe."
"Safe?" The imitation echoed the word with a breathless laugh, shaking his head. "You think he's safe because you lock his door at night? Because you whisper prayers you no longer believe in? You think your pathetic spellings keep the echoes out? No, Haneul, he hears me. He feels me. Every time his eyes flick toward that window, I'm there. When he dreams, I walk through his mind like it was always mine."
A thin, nauseating pressure crawled beneath Haneul's ribs as if invisible fingers trailed against his organs, tugging, testing his resolve for cracks.
The beam of light caught the edge of Hyeonjae's fingers as they flexed against the armrest, pale skin stretched too tight, knuckles whitening as though straining against invisible restraints.
The movement was subtle but deliberate, a signal that restraint was temporary, that proximity might shift at any moment.
"You want to take him back, don't you?" Hyeonjae whispered, leaning forward into the narrow path of light, his shadow bending grotesquely across the warped floorboards. "But you never really had him. Not after this place whispered his name. Your whole bloodline. I know the real you." His voice softened to a lullaby's cadence, almost tender. "Let this be. He is mine now, not because I took him, but because you left the door open long enough for me to step through. Even cold water has high and low."
Haneul's grip around the rod tightened until his knuckles burned beneath the skin, veins rising in sharp relief beneath his wrist. The object in his coat throbbed again, almost jubilant, as if sensing the final descent toward collision.
This rod was never meant for salvation. It was an instrument of severance.
Once activated, there would be no turning back. What remained afterward would not be clean or merciful.
"I didn't leave the door open," Haneul whispered, voice low, his breath fogging faintly in the cold. "You forced your way in. And now I'm here to shut it."
"You?" The word hissed from Hyeonjae's mouth like venom dripped from a split fang. His grin faltered, just briefly, before returning even wider than before. "You don't have that kind of power yet." His voice rasped now, rising in volume as his composure cracked. "You never did. You're nothing but a coward playing guardian, too weak to face what he already knows. Even though you are bitten by a tiger, you will live if you come to your senses."
The temperature around them plunged. Every breath that left Haneul's lips coiled into the stale air, evaporating seconds later.
His heartbeat pounded not from terror, but from the rising pitch of finality building in his blood. This was no longer a conversation.
The rod in his hand twitched, almost guiding itself, pulling his hand downward.
The cloth wrapping slipped as though pushed by unseen fingers, revealing more of the coiled engravings, symbols older than language, crafted not to contain, but to excise. Symbols that devoured names.
"You don't belong in his skin," Haneul said again, voice now filled with something harder than rage, resolve so dense it turned his words to iron. "And I'm going to peel you out of him, piece by piece."
Hyeonjae's smile withered. Its hands gripped the chair's arms, nails digging into the splintering wood. "You'll break him in the process."
"Then so be it. If it has to be, it has to be. Even if the sky collapses, there is a hole to escape out of."
For the first time, something flickered behind Hyeonjae's glassy eyes, a sliver of calculation narrowing into uncertainty, as if, perhaps, he had misjudged how far Haneul was willing to go.
The stale air thickened, vibrating with the silent anticipation of a line finally crossed.
The silence between them grew heavy, thick as wet cement, weighing down the air until even the smallest breath felt like inhaling something raw and unnatural.
Hyeonjae's smile no longer reached his eyes.
Beneath that still mask, there was motion, subtle flickers beneath the pale surface of his skin, like tendrils shifting just beneath a stretched canvas, struggling to maintain the fragile illusion of humanity that was beginning to thin beneath Haneul's unwavering glare.
"You still believe you're stronger than the rules written here," Hyeonjae hissed, voice cracking like an old floorboard ready to give way beneath too much weight. "That you're not bound by this place like the rest of us. But you don't understand the soil you walk on." His voice trembled on the edge of contempt and something far more dangerous, fear wrapped in pride.
The beam of the flashlight quivered slightly in Haneul's grip, not from weakness, but from the unbearable restraint it took to remain still.
His other hand flexed, thumb sliding across the length of the rod, tracing those sickle-shaped etchings that pulsed faintly with heat, markings that hummed with the promise of violence carefully stored away.
Each carved symbol seemed to resonate with an unspoken will, eager to be unleashed, urging his resolve closer to the edge where hesitation could no longer survive.
"You mistake endurance for permission," Haneul replied, voice deepening as if something old and buried inside him was rising at last. "I've allowed you to wear that face because I wasn't ready before. But tonight, you'll leave it behind. Along with his on my feet." His throat constricted as the words left his mouth, his pulse quickening, not from fear but from the inevitability that loomed between them now.
Hyeonjae leaned forward just enough that the weak beam carved harsh shadows beneath his brow, making his face sharpen unnaturally under the strain of maintaining its false composition. "And if I refuse?" His tone slid into a poisonous mockery, eyes glittering with the sick thrill of testing the breaking point. "What if I decide to stay?"
The old floor beneath Haneul's boots creaked softly, the wood swollen with dampness beneath the weight of history. Every inch of the house seemed to close in around them now, as though even the structure itself leaned in to listen, hungry for what would come next.
The air cooled even further, the temperature descending into an unnatural cold that gnawed at the edges of Haneul's breath, freezing each exhale in pale threads that coiled like smoke and vanished into the stale gloom.
"You think this body is yours to command," Hyeonjae whispered now, voice dropping to a thin rasp as his composure began to fray. "But it belongs to me now. His heartbeat answers me. His thoughts open when I whisper. You may carry that tool, but you are far too late. You won't break him free. All you'll do is shatter what little remains."
The rod in Haneul's coat grew hotter, as though reacting to the venom in Hyeonjae's words, its warmth crawling up his arm in waves that sank into his bones, feeding his resolve.
The time for caution had bled dry. The long months of waiting, of watching, of biting down every instinct to act, those days had passed behind him like old smoke.
"You've filled his head with your rot," Haneul growled now, the gravel in his voice thickening with every syllable. "You've stolen his nights, poisoned his memories, and gnawed at him until he barely knows which world is real anymore." His jaw locked as he advanced a single step closer. "But he still remembers me. And that's what terrifies you."