For a moment, Hyeonjae's face froze, not in fear, but in a strained calculation that faltered as his grip tightened on the chair's rotted armrests, fingers pressing deep enough into the softened wood that dark cracks spread beneath his nails.
His voice came thin and brittle now, leaking fury through clenched teeth.
"You arrogant little fucking bastard. You still believe you matter?" His pupils thinned beneath the shrinking light, almost reptilian in the way they narrowed as his mask continued slipping. "I could take you fully, right now, and crush what remains and wear you without resistance. And you would stand there, helplessly, as I hollow you out in front of him."
That was enough. The space between them vanished in a breath.
Before Hyeonjae could react, Haneul's fist shot forward, snapping through the damp air with brutal finality.
The sound of knuckles cracking against flesh rang sharp in the stale room, a wet, sickening collision that sent Hyeonjae's head snapping sideways, his cheek caving beneath the impact as his body lurched sideways in the chair.
The flashlight tumbled to the floor, its beam spinning wildly before landing at an awkward angle, throwing wild, convulsing shadows across the warped walls as if the house itself recoiled from the sudden violence.
Hyeonjae's breath hitched, head hanging for a moment, shoulders twitching as if trying to realign beneath the blow.
The pale stretch of his skin pulsed faintly where the fist landed, darkening beneath the thin surface as his head turned back, slower this time, lips curling into something neither a grin nor a scowl, something far more broken.
"You shouldn't have done that," he rasped, voice thick now, teeth streaked faintly red where the inside of his cheek had split.
Haneul's chest heaved as his stance squared, fingers still flexing from the punch. "I should have done it a long time ago."
The air around them seemed to strain, thin invisible threads pulled taut, as though the space itself was tightening in anticipation of what would follow.
Hyeonjae's tongue moved across his blood-slick teeth, slowly savoring the metallic taste as though even pain was another form of nourishment.
His head tilted slightly, neck cracking with a brittle snap as he straightened in the chair.
The silence thickened again, dense as fog, as if the entire house held its breath, watching this grotesque ritual unfold between the two figures trapped inside its decaying ribs.
"You always had that temper," Hyeonjae murmured, voice like silk dragged across broken glass, smooth at first, but hiding the jagged edges beneath. "And it's so easy to provoke. So desperate to act as if you carry weight here. But all you ever bring into this place is your noise."
His hand lifted slowly, not in defense, not in retaliation, but with a deliberate slowness that made the motion unbearable. His pale fingers hovered in the air, curling slightly as though tracing the outline of Haneul's face without yet touching it, savoring the anticipation.
Then came the slap.
Soft at first. An open palm landing against Haneul's cheek with a sound more insulting than painful, a flat, measured contact that wasn't meant to injure, but to humiliate.
The kind of touch that dismissed rather than challenged. The gesture of one who believes absolute control remains firmly in their grasp.
"You think one punch changes the order of things?" Hyeonjae whispered, his breath crawling across Haneul's skin as the fingers lingered, tracing down his jawline with a mock tenderness that curdled into mockery. "You never understood where you stood. You were always beneath me. I bet this slap ignites your anger, right? Try barking one more time."
The hand lifted again.
Another slap. This one is slightly firmer, but still measured. The sound echoed softly in the stale room, the air vibrating under its weightless cruelty.
"You call yourself a friend," Hyeonjae continued, voice dipping lower, nearly gentle now, as though consoling a child who refused to accept a harsh truth. "But you abandoned him first and left him alone in the dark." His fingers pressed against Haneul's cheek, thumb sliding beneath the edge of his eye in a grotesque parody of affection. "You were too weak to keep him safe."
A third slap, slower than the last, as if savoring the rhythm of humiliation, each strike not meant to break bone, but to wear down will, to fracture resolve one crack at a time.
Haneul's jaw locked under the growing sting. His breathing had deepened now, controlled but heavy, his shoulders squared as every nerve inside him screamed for release.
His hand itched toward the rod inside his coat, feeling its warmth pulse as though it, too, hungered for an end to this game.
"You're trembling," Hyeonjae whispered now, lips curving upward into something vile, "You pretend it's rage. But it's not. It's fear. You know you cannot stop me. You never could. You came here tonight hoping to be forgiven for your failure, hoping that if you stood tall long enough, I would give him back. But he is long gone."
His hand rose again, slower this time, fingers spreading wider for what would be the fourth.
But Haneul's patience collapsed.
Before the hand could fall, Haneul's fist exploded upward in a vicious arc, cutting through the thin pocket of air between them.
The knuckles connected beneath Hyeonjae's jaw with a brutal force that snapped his head backward violently, the chair shrieking beneath him as it skidded an inch across the warped floorboards.
This time, there was no restraint, no symbolic warning; this was the full release of everything Haneul had bottled for far too long.
Hyeonjae's neck jerked with the blow, his teeth clacking together audibly before his head lolled forward again, breath rasping through flared nostrils as the taste of blood filled his mouth once more.
The grin didn't vanish, it only twisted, broader now, teeth streaked with crimson.
"You should've done that much sooner," he whispered, voice ragged, breath misting faintly in the cold air between them. "Now… we're finally speaking the same language. Like always. Like the old times."
The room thickened as the silence stretched, heavy as drowned velvet.
Haneul didn't respond at first. His teeth pressed together until his jaw trembled beneath the skin, his narrowed gaze cutting through the stale air as if trying to carve away the shape in front of him.
"You were never meant to speak to him," his voice finally surfaced, quiet, strained, but edged with growing fury.
Across from him, Hyeonjae's grin barely shifted, as if fed by the anger itself. His tone slithered out, patient and indulgent. "He came to me, Haneul. And maybe, if someone had cared enough to tell him what hid beneath the pretty stories, he wouldn't have come wandering through these doors looking for ghosts you pretended didn't exist."
The words landed like nails driven into rotten wood. Haneul's breath hitched.
His fists trembled. "He's five," he hissed, voice rising with barely bridled rage.
Hyeonjae's head tilted slightly, the movement unsettling in its slow precision, his words colder now. "He's Jihoon's twin."
That name cracked through the room like frost splitting old stone, cutting into the marrow of Haneul's chest. His entire body stiffened. Breath halted, and muscles locked.
"You don't get to bury one and lie to the other, pretending the story found an ending," Hyeonjae went on, his voice flattening into something that scraped along Haneul's nerves. "This place remembers, Haneul. And so do I. This is... the story that has been created. The story of a house, long before it was abandoned. For him."
Haneul's boots rasped against the warped floorboards as he moved in a slow circle around the chair, each step thudding beneath him like distant drumbeats.
He kept his eyes away from Hyeonjae's face now, focusing instead on the cracked walls, the suffocating damp seeping through the boards, the stains where rain and decay had blended into grotesque patterns resembling veins beneath diseased skin.
"I should have burned this place to the ground," he muttered, almost to himself, his voice strained.
"You should've tried," Hyeonjae replied softly, his lips curling upward. "But it lived through it."
"You know why I came tonight."
"Of course," Hyeonjae answered as though amused by a child attempting to recite a lesson. "You think threats will drive me back into the dark. You still believe this is about who holds power. But you've never held it, Haneul. Not then. Not now."
"I kept him away from you all these years."
"And yet," Hyeonjae whispered, his words dragging like a cold breeze through bone, "he was found."
A pause unfolded between them, stretched thin like glass about to shatter, that crushing awareness hanging between them.
"What are you planning?" Haneul finally asked, voice heavy, the words nearly cracking as they left him.
Hyeonjae's grin widened, not playful but venomous, the corners of his mouth splitting almost unnaturally. "Planning?" His voice dropped into a low hum. "No, Haneul. That's your sickness. Your plan. Your strategize. Your lie. And at the end, I waited. This house does the work for me. It always has. Although it doesn't function as a living thing now."
"You're using him," Haneul growled, voice breaking as his hand twitched beneath his coat.
"I'm revealing what he already carries inside," Hyeonjae whispered, voice tightening, as though savoring each word. "That emptiness where Jihoon should stand. That endless hole he cannot name. It wasn't his doing, but it belonged to someone."
Haneul's tone dropped, low and dangerous, like storm clouds rolling in unseen. "Ridiculous! Don't you dare throw that on me."
"Why not?" Hyeonjae's voice cut sharper, teeth showing now behind his thinning smile. "You chose his fate. You left one beneath the ground while clutching the other like a prize you didn't deserve."
Haneul's fingers gripped the concealed rod beneath his coat as though it were the only thing tethering him to the present.
The iron pulsed faintly in his palm, humming like distant thunder, its surface marked by etchings that crawled beneath his touch.
Every symbol was a scar left by a choice he never escaped, every groove a wound that refused to close.
"Say his name again," Haneul rasped through clenched teeth, pulling the rod free, its strange surface glinting under the dim light that fought to survive inside the suffocating room. "And I swear—"
Hyeonjae stood slowly. The movement stretched unnaturally, as if the space itself recoiled to accommodate him.
His height seemed to grow, though whether it was the figure or the house bending to his form, Haneul couldn't tell. He has now reached his ear level.
The skin that covered him was pale enough to seem drained, and yet his eyes burned with a depth that spoke of things that should have long since withered.
"You'll what?" Hyeonjae whispered, his breath coiling into the stale air between them.
"You were never frightening," Hyeonjae went on, his voice a murmur that slid beneath the skin. "Not when you lied. Not when you ran. Not even now. You've always been the weaker of us."
Their eyes locked, two wolves circling the same carcass, neither blinking, neither yielding. Haneul spoke then, each word a tremor beneath his breath. "Stay away from Taejun."
"And if I don't?"
A beat.
"I'll burn every inch of this place," Haneul hissed. "And whatever is left inside."
The silence after those words was suffocating, as if even the walls paused to listen.
Then, Hyeonjae's grin returned, twisted into a grin that almost trembled with something mournful.
"Then you'd better move quickly," he said softly. "Because the house already favors him. And once it chooses... it never lets go."
Haneul began backing toward the door, the iron rod steady in his grip, but his breath trembled under the weight of emotions devouring him from inside, rage, guilt, dread, all competing for dominance.
He didn't take his eyes off Hyeonjae, not even as his back met the doorframe. The decaying door groaned as it shut behind him, separating the living from what should have remained forgotten.
And in the dark, Hyeonjae lingered, smiling faintly, as though savoring the inevitable collapse that had already begun.
The apartment was heavy with silence, the kind that pressed against the walls and settled deep into the bones of the place.
Outside, the city's restless murmurs slipped through the cracked window, distant and muted, like echoes from a world that felt far removed from this quiet room.
Haneul sat at the edge of the threadbare couch, his frame hunched forward, fingers interlaced so tightly that the skin around his knuckles had whitened beneath the strain.
The faint glow of a single lamp cast long shadows across the room, stretching and shifting as if reluctant to let go of the darkness creeping in from every corner.
Across from him, Taejun curled inward on the couch, knees pulled close beneath him as though trying to fold himself into the smallest possible shape, to disappear beneath his skin.
His eyes stayed fixed on his trembling hands, tracing trembling, restless patterns along the fabric of his worn pajama pants. Not a word passed between them.
The silence wasn't empty; it carried a weight that neither was willing to break, thick with the things left unsaid, the truths too dangerous to name aloud.