Hyeonjae reached out slowly, fingers steady despite the thickening air, and lowered the stub of candle on his candle, the one he'd brought up from the cellar himself earlier that evening, down to the floor between them.
The flame quivered, as if reluctant to part from his hand, casting its last shivers of gold across the rough attic boards before settling into a thin, uncertain glow.
He placed the little brass handle carefully beside it, the soft clink of metal touching wood far louder than it should've been in that moment, as though even the attic was listening.
Taejun watched his movements with an odd sense of gravity, feeling the shift as more than just physical.
The gesture didn't feel casual; it felt like something being set down intentionally, like a torch before a long climb or a marker before a deeper descent.
Hyeonjae wasn't just freeing his hands, he was preparing or bracing.
He sat back, legs crossed, shoulders hunched a little now, not from age or fatigue, but from something else, like he'd shed whatever lighthearted armor he usually wore and was finally letting the weight of memory rest fully on his spine.
"Funny thing," he said after a moment, voice low again. "The house never tried to scare me. Not exactly. Not like the ones in books or movies. It didn't slam doors or whisper in corners. It just… wanted something. Or maybe needed something. Like it had forgotten how to be a home and was asking me to remind it."
He glanced at the candle. The flame tilted sideways, then snapped upright again.
Taejun opened his mouth to speak, but stopped.
There was a sound again, that same sliding scrape from below, but closer now.
It was not loud, but unmistakable, like something dragging fingernails along the baseboards, a searching sound, patient, and almost curious.
Hyeonjae didn't flinch.
His eyes remained fixed on the dark beyond the candle's edge, as if the shadows themselves had begun to breathe.
"We're not alone in this house," he said, not with fear, but with quiet certainty. "And I don't think we've ever been."
Then, slowly, he stood.
His joints cracked softly in the hush, and the attic groaned faintly beneath him, wood shifting like something was stirring deeper inside its bones.
He extended a hand toward Taejun.
"You coming?" he asked, not with a grin, not with a joke, but with something solemn and unshakable.
Taejun hesitated just a moment, then reached up and took his hand.
The candle between them flared briefly as if in protest, casting one last wave of flickering defiance before dimming into a small, stubborn glow.
They moved as one, stepping beyond the circle of light into the dark stairwell, where the cold air pressed tighter and the house watched with breathless anticipation, remembering the boy who once promised he'd never leave.
Their steps creaked gently down the narrow attic stairs, each footfall swallowed quickly by the hush of the house below.
The candle's glow faded behind them like a fading memory, leaving only the faintest orange breath against the slanted ceiling as they descended.
Dust floated in the air, disturbed by movement, glinting like ash in the dim.
Taejun clutched Hyeonjae's hand tighter, his small fingers cool with nervous sweat.
But his voice, when it finally broke the silence, came softly, thoughtfully, less afraid than curious.
"Maybe it was Richard," he said, glancing sideways toward the hallway that opened up at the bottom of the stairs. "Don't you think so too, ahjusshi?"
The name seemed to hang in the air like smoke, lingering.
Hyeonjae froze, not fully, not like someone who was caught, but like someone who'd just heard a word they hadn't let themselves think in years.
His eyes flicked toward Taejun with a slow, almost mechanical turn, and for the briefest moment, the creases of his face deepened, not with confusion, but with recognition, as if the name had struck something buried.
"Richard," he repeated, carefully, like tasting the syllables. "Where did you hear that name?"
Taejun shrugged, but it was the kind of shrug a child gives when the truth feels too strange to say out loud.
"I don't know," he murmured. "It just… felt like him. The sound downstairs. The way it moved. Like it wasn't angry. He just waiting."
For a moment, neither of them moved.
A cool breeze stirred the bottom of the stairs, rustling a curtain at the end of the hall, and somewhere in the walls, the soft clicking of old pipes began, slow, rhythmic, like footsteps that weren't trying to hide.
Hyeonjae's expression tightened. "That house I told you about," he said slowly, his voice quieter now, "it wasn't ours to begin with. My grandfather built it, but the land… the land came from someone else. An Englishman. A recluse. They said he lived alone. He never left. Not even when the war came through. He said he was buried in the foundation."
Taejun's lips parted. "Richard?"
Hyeonjae nodded, just once. "They said his real name was scratched into the old beams. It was so deep, like someone didn't want it forgotten."
And just then, the light at the far end of the hallway flickered, briefly, unnaturally, just a pulse, like someone exhaled light.
Hyeonjae stepped in front of Taejun, placing a firm hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Stay close," he murmured, his voice the calm edge of a knife drawn slowly from its sheath. "If it is Richard… he remembers. Especially me."
The candle between them flickered gently, casting trembling halos of light that crawled across the attic beams like soft, glowing insects.
Shadows moved slowly across the stacked boxes and old furniture, elongating like fingers stretched too far, reaching through decades of dust and silence.
Taejun sat with his knees pulled slightly to his chest, arms wrapped around them in a loose grip that betrayed a restlessness he wouldn't admit aloud.
The quiet didn't feel heavy now, only strange, full of something unspoken, like the hush between the inhale and the scream.
It wasn't oppressive, but it felt as if the house was listening, not with ears, but with walls, with floorboards, with the air itself, thickened by memory and time.
And then, without turning his head, without even blinking, it was Hyeonjae who broke the silence first.
"There's a room beneath this one," he murmured, so softly it barely seemed meant for Taejun at all.
"One of the architects never drew. One of the owners was never found. The kind of room that builds itself when no one's looking. Out of grief, maybe. Or guilt. Or maybe loneliness so sharp it cuts its door."
Taejun's gaze snapped toward him, searching his profile for some glimmer of a joke, a grin tucked behind the usual theatrical smirk.
But Hyeonjae's face was serious, not solemn, but more reverent, like a man recalling a prayer he wasn't sure he believed.
"You're making that up," Taejun said, though his voice lacked conviction.
"I could be," Hyeonjae replied with a shrug. "Or maybe I've just been waiting for someone like you to come along and prove I'm not."
A board creaked beneath them, not from their movement, but as if something below had stirred.
The candle flame bent slightly, not with a breeze, but with a breath.
Taejun swallowed and glanced down at the wooden floor, suddenly aware of the faint outline beneath the rug, a rectangular seam he hadn't noticed before.
It looked ordinary and innocent, but it hadn't been there when he first sat down.
He was almost sure of it.
Hyeonjae stood slowly, his movements deliberate, almost ceremonial.
He didn't rush, didn't speak, he walked toward the rug, and crouched beside it.
With a single motion, he peeled it back, revealing an old trapdoor, no handle, no hinges visible, just the warped grain of the wood forming a perfect outline.
Taejun didn't move. "What's down there?"
Hyeonjae glanced up at him, and something in his expression shifted, less like a stranger and more like a father beckoning a son toward something necessary, even if terrifying.
"I don't know anymore," he said quietly. "But I think it's time we found out."
"You're serious?" Taejun's voice cracked slightly.
"Only when it counts."
He reached out, pressing his palm to the center of the trapdoor.
The wood didn't creak or resist, it sighed, low and exhausted, and then slowly sank, opening with the reluctant grace of a wound remembering how to bleed.
A wave of cold, earthy air drifted upward, thick with the scent of old paper, rain-soaked stone, and something else, something metallic and almost sweet, like rusted music boxes and dried rose petals.
Taejun stood, reluctantly drawn forward as though the attic had exhaled and he was caught in its breath.
Hyeonjae descended first, his figure swallowed by the black below, leaving behind only the soft sound of his voice rising like mist: "Come here. Don't be scared, I won't leave you behind."
The trapdoor gaped like an open mouth, and for a heartbeat, Taejun considered turning back, grabbing his bag, and leaving the attic behind forever, but something stronger held him there.
Not curiosity, not even fear, it was the unbearable idea that if he didn't go, he'd never understand why he'd been drawn to this place.
Why had the house opened for him?
Why this man, this strange, ridiculous, possibly unhinged man, felt more like a father than his real one ever had?
So he stepped forward, heart pounding with a rhythm too loud for such stillness, and disappeared down into the dark after him.
The candle flickered once, then snuffed itself out, and the attic, above them, finally fell still, content, perhaps, that they had taken the first step into its memory.
His voice came low and distant, like it had walked a long way before reaching his throat, as though it had wandered across a decade or more of silence before finding breath.
"I used to live in a house like this," he said, not turning his head. "Not this one, but it had similar bones. Like its tall ceilings that breathed when the wind changed. Floorboards that cracked like old wrists. Doors that never quite shut, no matter how many times you slammed them, and stairs that sang every time someone walked up, not in a haunted way, but as if the house was announcing your return."
Taejun watched him, and for once, the candlelight didn't play tricks with Hyeonjae's face.
The flicker painted soft gold beneath his eyes, but didn't hide the shadows beneath them.
The usual spark, the showman's grin, the sly rhythm of rehearsed words was gone.
What sat beside Taejun now wasn't the eccentric stranger who spun tales at dinner tables.
It was a man speaking plainly, like someone setting a stone down after carrying it too long.
"I was seventeen," Hyeonjae continued, the words slow and shaped by memory. "My father had just passed in a car crash. It was so sudden for me, but it was one of those deaths you don't believe at first. It's like when you hear the news, but it slips off your skin. You can still feel his cologne on the coat rack, and still hear him whistling in the next room. You think the phone's going to ring, and he'll say he's fine, and it was just some mistake at the morgue. But it doesn't ring. And if it does, it's just a message that cuts off in the middle of your name."
A thin, brittle laugh escaped him, curling up toward the rafters. "After that, it was just me and my mother. She couldn't afford the city anymore, so we packed what we could and moved into the old family home. It's way out in the countryside. The kind of place where fog rose before the birds and didn't lift until the sun was nearly gone again. It's where the only sound at night was the insects, and sometimes, if you were listening, something walking just past the window."
Taejun said nothing, something had taken hold of him, not fear, not exactly, but a quiet tension, like the air had thickened just enough to feel its weight pressing on his skin.
He could feel a thread pulling at him, as if the story was a tunnel being dug beneath them and they were sliding into it with each word.
"We weren't alone in that house," Hyeonjae said after a pause, his voice softer now, as though he feared waking something that might still be upstairs.
"It wasn't anything dramatic at first. Just a door that always drifted open, even when we locked it. There's a cold spot that feels like someone brushing past. Lights that flickered, even when the power was fine. My mother thought it was the grief. She used to talk to my father at night like he was still there, leaving dinner for him, reading his old journals aloud. I thought it was sad at first. Then I started hearing footsteps. In the attic."
The candle dimmed slightly, as if it, too, were listening.
"I never told her," he went on. "Because a part of me didn't want it to stop. I'd lie awake just waiting for those creaks. For that soft shift of weight above me. Because I kept thinking… what if it was him? What if he was trying to come back, but I just didn't remember how?"
Taejun's hands tightened around his knees.
There was something electric in the air now, not static exactly, but memory being stirred too quickly.
He could feel it gathering around them, humming behind the walls, sliding beneath the boards like wind crawling up through a crack.
"But it wasn't him," Hyeonjae whispered. "Whatever lived in that house didn't want to comfort us. It wanted to be him. And the more we grieved, the more we gave it room to try."
He turned to look at Taejun fully now, his expression bleak, not panicked, not frightened, just deeply, painfully honest.
"I left that house when I was nineteen," he said. "I ran one night and didn't look back. But sometimes, when I sleep, I still hear the stairs. Not from memory, but from the other side of the wall."
Something creaked above them, sharp and distinct, a single groan of timber shifting, though neither of them had moved.
The candle flame tilted hard to one side, then stood still again.
Taejun looked up at the ceiling, heart hammering, but the attic was still.
"I brought you here because I think this house remembers me," Hyeonjae said. "And I think it remembers what followed me out."
Taejun didn't speak, didn't breathe too loudly. He only listened and wondered, dreadfully, curiously, if something had just stepped onto the stairs above.
"My mom worked at night," Hyeonjae continued, his voice thinner now, drawn from somewhere farther away, as though he was sinking backward through time.
"She was a nurse. Private care and long hours. She'd come home at sunrise, clothes wrinkled, eyes red from the fluorescent dark, always smelling of antiseptic and lavender, like she was trying to scrub the death off her skin and replace it with something soft. And every night, before she left, she'd lean over my doorframe and whisper the same thing to me, never missed a night, not once."
He tilted his head slightly, imitating her voice, low and affectionate, tinged with a sadness too rehearsed to be accidental. "'Take care of the house, Jae-ah. It gets lonely if you don't. I love you more than you know."
His mouth curled into a smile, but it didn't settle right on his face; it hovered crookedly, thin and unsure, like it wasn't supposed to be there. "I always thought she was just being poetic. You know how grown-ups talk sometimes. Like they're trying to turn heartache into lullabies. Grief into something pretty enough to swallow without choking."
He fell quiet for a moment, staring into the flame as though he could see the past flickering there, blurred and warped in the wax-glow.
The silence between them stretched, no longer comfortable, not entirely.
It was a pause that hummed, like a breath being held in another room.
"But the thing is…" His voice dropped further, not in volume, but in depth. "The house did get lonely."
Taejun didn't interrupt, he didn't even shift, every part of him had gone still, like a deer watching the brush for the moment it moves wrong.
"I'd hear things," Hyeonjae said, his gaze unfocused. "Not voices, exactly. More like... presence. Breathing in the rooms I hadn't stepped into. Along with sighs behind the walls. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and feel like someone had just walked out of my room and shut the door behind them. Like I'd missed them by a second. And there were dreams— ones that didn't belong to me. Not the kind you forget when the alarm rings. These dreams stayed. There are names I didn't know. Places I'd never seen. But I'd feel like I'd been there. This house is one of them."
He rubbed his hands slowly together, knuckles clicking like dry wood. "And the lights. Every bulb would be on in the middle of the night. There was no sound, except this blinding glow pouring out of every room like the house was trying to wake itself up from something. Once, I found the refrigerator completely empty, except for my house keys. Another time, my shoes were in the oven, laces melted. The stove hadn't even been touched for days."
He turned to look at Taejun then, and though the light was soft, his eyes weren't; they were carved deep, like something had been staring out of them for years. "I started talking to it. The house. Not with my mouth at first, just in my head. When I walked down the hall, I'd think, 'It's okay. I'm still here.' Before bed: 'You don't have to be afraid.' After every creak: 'I'm listening.' Like I was keeping it company."
The candle flame trembled, just slightly, but the shadows behind them shifted more than they should have, as though something moved just beyond the reach of light, too careful to be seen, but not careful enough to be forgotten.
Taejun didn't blink.
The attic had grown colder, though the window was shut, and the candle's flame was too steady for drafts.
The kind of cold that wasn't about temperature.
The kind that came when something was watching from a place it didn't belong.
Hyeonjae drew in a breath like he was about to say more, but didn't.
And then, faintly, from somewhere below them, not loud, came a soft, sliding scrape, like something dragging a hand along the wooden underside of the stairs.
Neither of them spoke.
The silence had become a living thing now.
And the candle flickered again, not from wind, not from breath, but as though it had been touched.