Chapter 2: Voices That Were Never Born
Thursday.
The audio room on the third floor of Hwangdae High was rarely used.
Thick acoustic panels dulled even the sharpest sounds. Most students avoided it.
But that was where Group C was told to meet.
Eura stood just inside the door.
The room smelled like old foam and dust.
Lee Aerin sat cross-legged on the floor, scrolling through her phone with pink nails and glitter-stained eyelids. She looked up briefly.
"You're Eura, right?"
Eura nodded.
"Where's Jaewon?"
Aerin rolled her eyes. "Probably making love to some sound wave."
Before Eura could respond, the lights flickered once.
Then again.
And Jaewon walked in.
Tall. Hooded. Headphones still hanging around his neck like a signature.
He didn't speak to Aerin.
He didn't look at Eura.
He just walked to the soundboard, slid in behind it, and pressed a key.
A beat began playing.
Bare. Echoed.
Then silence.
Then—his voice.
But not singing. Not speaking.
Whispering.
> "How long have you been hearing it?"
Eura froze.
Aerin looked confused. "What's this? Are we... supposed to be doing horror now?"
Jaewon didn't look up. His fingers danced over the sliders.
The track kept playing.
Eura's own melody from "Untitled_27" slid in like a ghost.
Exactly her file.
But she never gave it to anyone.
And no one should've been able to download it.
She opened her mouth to say something — to ask — but Jaewon spoke first.
Low. Calm.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
Her blood ran cold.
She blinked. "What?"
He looked at her for the first time.
His eyes were strange.
Too quiet. Too steady.
"I saw you. Baekhyun Station. Two years ago."
Her stomach dropped.
He kept going.
"I was there. Platform 3. I was waiting for the 10:27. And I saw a girl across the tracks."
Aerin muttered, "This better not be some stalker roleplay—"
But Eura couldn't move.
"Your brother was with you," Jaewon said. "Until he wasn't."
Her hands trembled.
"How—"
"I saw what took him."
---
Aerin laughed, unsure. "Okay, no offense, but if this is your group project pitch, I'm not into—"
Jaewon clicked the track off.
Silence swallowed the room.
Then, without turning around, he muttered, "Leave."
Aerin blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You're not tuned to it. You'll never hear it. And you're in danger just being here."
A beat.
"You're scaring me, freak," she spat.
But she still grabbed her bag and left.
---
Only Eura and Jaewon remained.
She stood stiff, unsure if her legs could hold her.
Jaewon leaned forward.
His voice dropped.
"It sings to those it marked."
She swallowed.
"'It'?"
He tapped the desk gently.
"The Silence."
A pause.
"The thing that eats voice. Music. Memory. It doesn't kill you. It rewrites you. Makes you... soundless."
Eura whispered, "You're lying."
He leaned closer.
His expression was still.
"I wish I was."
He pulled a thin cassette tape from his coat.
Old. Cracked.
Labeled in fading ink: "Room Zero – Rehearsal."
"Do you know what this is?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"It's your brother's last recording."
Eura didn't move.
Her breath trembled.
She stared at the cassette tape in Jaewon's hand like it was radioactive.
"You're lying," she said again, softer this time. "That tape can't exist."
His voice was quieter now, too. Almost gentle.
"I found it in the school archive. Buried under other students' discarded audio tracks. No one listened to it. No one even knew who it belonged to."
Eura stepped forward slowly.
"He never recorded anything in school. He wasn't—he wasn't even part of the music club."
"I know," Jaewon said. "But the audio says otherwise."
He placed the tape into a small portable player he'd brought. Pressed play.
Silence.
Static crackled softly, then dipped.
Eura's hands curled into fists.
And then—
A note.
A single piano key.
Soft. Sharp.
Then another.
Then a soft male voice:
> "Room Zero, Test Recording 1. Can you hear me?"
Her knees buckled.
That voice.
Her brother.
He was younger—maybe thirteen. The tape must've been years old.
> "Eura said this room doesn't exist. But it's here. Under the third floor. No signs. No locks."
"When I sing here… it feels like someone's listening."
Eura gasped softly.
Jaewon glanced at her, his expression unreadable.
The voice continued.
> "I don't think it's a ghost. Ghosts make you cold. This… makes you forget."
A low mechanical humming faded in under his voice, almost like a reversed heartbeat.
> "I'm gonna try it. The melody."
A pause.
Then a few broken piano notes.
And then a voice — high, haunting, and wrong.
Not her brother's.
Not human.
A second voice joined him.
It harmonized for a moment.
Then slowly overpowered him.
And then the tape warped.
Sound folded into itself, distorted into howls and shrieks and garbled echoes.
The player sputtered.
The lights in the room dimmed.
Jaewon stopped the tape.
Pulled it out.
His hands were shaking.
Just slightly.
"I shouldn't have played it here," he whispered.
"What… was that voice?" Eura asked. Her voice was paper-thin.
"I told you," Jaewon said. "It's the Silence."
She wanted to call him crazy.
But the pain in her chest, the warping of the sound, the echo in her bones—it was real.
Too real.
Jaewon stood.
"I don't think your brother died. Not like they said."
Eura's nails dug into her palms.
He continued.
"I think he got erased. Swallowed. Rewritten by that room."
---
She followed him after school.
Through the back hallways no one used anymore.
Past the old gym.
Down a service stairwell locked behind a cracked metal door.
Jaewon had the keys.
Of course he did.
"Where did you get those?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
The stairwell smelled like mildew and something older.
Dust clung to every wall.
And at the very bottom —
A room with no number.
No sign.
Just a soundproof black door.
Room Zero.
Jaewon unlocked it.
Pushed it open.
Eura stepped inside.
The air was thick.
The walls were lined with outdated recording gear and rotting foam panels.
The microphones were unplugged, but still hung in place.
The carpet was stained.
The piano in the corner was missing three keys.
It looked like any other abandoned music room.
But it didn't feel like one.
Jaewon closed the door.
Silence rushed in.
Complete silence.
Her ears ached.
Like the sound had been sucked out of her body.
He walked to the wall and pulled back a cracked tile.
Behind it — stacks of cassette tapes.
All unlabeled.
Hundreds.
"Students used to record their final music projects here. But most never got approved. Their files vanished. People forgot they even submitted them."
Eura turned slowly.
"There's no listing for this room in the school map."
"Exactly."
She stared at the dusty piano.
Her breath fogged, even though it wasn't cold.
Something wasn't right with the air here.
Or time.
"I think this room's not just forgotten," Jaewon said.
"I think it was erased."
---
He powered up one of the analog decks.
Inserted a fresh tape.
"Sit," he said.
She hesitated.
"We need to try something. If you sing… maybe it'll respond to you."
Eura stared at the microphone in front of her.
Old.
Cracked.
A thin wire leading nowhere.
"I haven't sung since—"
"I know," Jaewon said. "But I've heard your voice in places you never uploaded."
She swallowed.
"What if it takes me too?" she whispered.
He didn't blink.
"We won't let it."
She sat down.
The chair groaned beneath her like it hadn't been touched in years.
Dust clung to her sleeves.
The microphone buzzed — not electronically, but like it was breathing.
Jaewon adjusted the knobs on the analog deck.
No screen.
No meters.
Just red LEDs blinking in a sequence that didn't match any rhythm.
"Don't think about the melody," he said.
"Let it find you."
Eura looked at the mic.
She could barely remember the sound of her own voice anymore.
She'd gone silent for so long, it felt like her vocal cords might snap if she tried.
But she knew what she had to sing.
The lullaby.
The one from the livestream.
The one only her brother knew.
She closed her eyes.
And let it slip out.
> "Na-neun geudael tteonaji anh-ass-eoyo..."
(I never left you...)
At first, it was quiet.
Shaky.
But as the melody carried, her voice grew solid, clear, unafraid.
Like she had been waiting years to release it.
Jaewon didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Then—
The walls shivered.
Not the way sound bounces.
Not reverb.
Not echo.
This was the room reacting.
The panels pulsed.
The floor creaked without pressure.
A low hum vibrated from behind the walls, as if something massive had just woken up.
Eura kept singing.
> "Gidaryeossjyo... chagawoji anh-assjyo..."
(You waited... you never turned cold...)
Suddenly, the old piano in the corner responded.
A note played itself.
Then another.
The keys moved — unmanned.
The piano was accompanying her.
Her heart pounded.
Every instinct screamed to stop.
But her voice… it was no longer hers.
It had merged with something.
Something vast and ancient and forgotten.
Jaewon's fingers gripped the console tighter.
"Don't stop," he said through clenched teeth.
"It's syncing."
But syncing with what?
As she reached the final line of the lullaby, her throat tensed—
not from fear, but from resistance.
The silence was pushing back.
It didn't want to be named.
It didn't want to be remembered.
It tried to erase the notes as she sang them.
But she held.
And then, on the very last word—
The mic cracked.
Not the sound — the physical metal.
A thin fracture split down the stand.
The console blew a fuse.
The red lights flickered, then went black.
The piano screamed.
Every key slammed at once.
Eura choked.
She stopped.
Collapsed forward, gasping.
Jaewon caught her.
Pulled her back just before the mic stand snapped in half.
A flash.
Then total silence.
Not absence-of-sound silence.
But true void.
It pressed against her eardrums like static had died.
Like air had been deleted.
Jaewon looked terrified for the first time.
"It heard you," he whispered.
---
They didn't speak on the way back upstairs.
The school was almost empty now.
Sunset painted the windows blood-orange.
In the hallway outside the music room, someone had scribbled on the whiteboard:
"DO NOT ENTER ROOM ZERO. IT DOESN'T EXIST."
Jaewon saw it and shook his head.
"This wasn't here this morning."
Eura wiped her face.
Her voice still tingled in her chest like it hadn't fully returned to her.
She glanced at him.
"Was that... the thing that took my brother?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"I think that was just a part of it."
"What do you mean?"
"There's not just one Silence," he said.
"There are many. One for each voice that's been forgotten."
Eura stared at him.
"What happens if someone sings too loud?"
Jaewon looked at her.
Straight through her.
"It sings back."
---
That night, Eura dreamed in fragments.
She was back at Baekhyun Station.
Platform 4.
But everything was reversed.
Signs were mirrored.
People walked backward.
The train screeched in silence.
Across the platform, her brother stood — older now, but frozen.
His mouth moved.
She couldn't hear the words.
Then he screamed —
but the scream made no sound.
His body began to unravel.
Not physically — but sonically.
Each memory, each laugh, each cry —
pulled from him like threads of noise.
And behind him, a shadow with no shape and no source opened its arms.
Eura tried to run.
But her legs had no footsteps.
She was soundless too.
---
She woke at 3:14 a.m.
Her phone screen blinked.
New message from unknown number.
> "He's not gone. He's stored. Room Zero is only one chamber. There are 27 more."
She stared.
Hands trembling.
> "Find Room 4. Before the melody finishes itself."
And below that — an attachment.
Audio file.
Titled:
"Voice_That_Should_Not_Exist.mp3"
Eura didn't open the audio file right away.
Her thumb hovered over it.
Every instinct told her:
Don't.
She got up from bed and pulled the curtains shut.
Not because of the sunlight.
Because of the feeling.
That someone — something — might be watching.
Through the silence.
She put on her headphones.
Double-checked that no other apps were running.
Then pressed play.
0:00 – silence.
But not normal silence.
It was textured.
Layered.
Like there was a wall of noise that had just been muted.
At 0:13, a piano note.
Not just a key being pressed — but something that sounded like it had been played underwater.
The pitch twisted slightly.
Then another note.
And another.
Eura's chest tightened.
It was the same melody from the livestream.
The one her brother had written for her.
Only… it wasn't just piano anymore.
At 0:47, voices entered.
Low.
Male.
Chanting in reverse Korean.
She couldn't make out the words — they weren't meant to be understood.
They were meant to wake something.
Then — static.
Sharp.
Tearing.
Like a cassette being eaten alive.
And under it, something crawled.
A new voice.
Female.
Cracked.
Trying to whisper through broken speakers.
> "You already opened it... You already heard..."
The file cut off.
1 minute, 19 seconds.
That was all.
But it left a hole in her ears — a ringing that wasn't tinnitus.
A gap.
Eura stumbled back from her desk, yanked the headphones off.
Her phone screen glitched for a second.
Just a flicker.
A name flashed briefly on the top banner:
"Room 4"
And then it was gone.
---
The next morning, she didn't go to class.
She went back to the school archives.
Specifically the underground wing behind the auditorium.
It wasn't technically open to students.
But she wasn't asking anymore.
Jaewon was already there.
Waiting in front of a locked metal door.
A different one.
Not Room Zero.
"I got your message," she said.
He looked confused.
"I didn't send anything."
Eura pulled out her phone.
Showed him the file.
The message.
His face went pale.
"I've seen that file name before," he said.
"In the ghost club's hidden forums. The ones they deleted before graduation."
"Ghost club?"
"A few seniors last year. They said there were rooms in this school that didn't show up on blueprints. Rooms that remembered things."
"Things like my brother?"
He nodded slowly.
Eura gestured at the door.
"Is this Room 4?"
Jaewon pulled out a keyring again.
"I don't know. But there's something behind here. Something sealed."
He unlocked it.
The metal door groaned open.
No lights.
Eura stepped inside first.
---
It wasn't a classroom.
It wasn't even a full room.
It looked like a forgotten audio chamber.
Small. Round.
The walls were curved inward — like a giant ear.
In the center:
A single mic stand.
No wires.
On the wall behind it, scrawled in faded chalk:
"Echoes Don't Die. They Hide."
Eura felt the ringing in her ears return.
The melody.
It was trying to complete itself.
She stepped toward the mic.
Jaewon reached out.
"Wait—"
But it was too late.
Her breath hit the mic — and the room rippled.
Like the air had become liquid.
Reality bent.
And then — sound.
Her brother's voice.
> "Eura... please, if you hear this... don't answer. It can't know you remember..."
She froze.
Jaewon's eyes widened.
"That's a recording. A memory trap."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It plays a memory to pull you in. If you reply — you're bound to it."
The mic flickered.
Yes — flickered.
As if the object wasn't fully solid anymore.
> "I'm not gone. I'm stuck in between tracks. The melody's almost done—"
The voice broke.
Static swallowed it.
And then:
> "Don't let it finish. Room 27 is the source."
The audio ended.
Eura stumbled back.
"Room 27...?"
Jaewon turned toward her.
"That's the master room."
He looked horrified.
"If that melody completes in Room 27… every voice it's ever erased could be played backwards."
"What happens then?"
He hesitated.
And for once, Eura saw it.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
He'd been there.
Some part of him already knew.
"Then the Silence sings."
---