Hyeonjae's voice lingered in the air like the last curl of smoke from a smoldering candle, sweet at first, fragrant with charm, but blackened at the edges with something acrid and wrong.
"Ugh, I can feel it! You hurt my feelings once more, Taejun," he murmured again, more softly this time, his tone a velvet imitation of sincerity, wrapping cruelty in silk.
The pout clung to his lips like a mask he'd practiced in the mirror, a secondhand sorrow, stolen and worn with theatrical flair.
It wasn't sadness, it was mimicry, a child pressing his face against a windowpane, pretending to understand the rain.
And through it all, the gleam in his eyes never once wavered. If anything, it brightened.
It was the glint of something waiting beneath the skin of teeth polished and tucked behind a party smile, a predator dressed for celebration, delighted by the slow unraveling of its guest.
"Although I open my doors to you," he went on, each syllable drawn out as though he were pulling silk scarves from a magician's throat, "I prepare a night shaped exactly for your soul, a banquet of dark delights, a little existential salt in your wounds, and just a touch of that guilt you like to pretend isn't there. And this" he gestured lazily at Taejun, like one might wave off a dying insect, "this trembling scrap of defiance is all I receive in return?"
His voice shifted then, not with anger, but with an amused sort of spite, the kind that lingers after a joke too cruel to laugh at. "You stand there like a broken umbrella in the middle of a storm, spokes twisted, fabric flapping, entirely useless and still trying to be dignified. Honestly, Taejun. It's impolite. You can't be talking to me like that, you know?"
Then, with a movement so slow it bordered on reverent, he extended his hand.
It hovered in the air between them like an unspoken threat dressed in tenderness, fingers unfurling with a grace too calculated to be sincere.
There was no warmth in the gesture, only the illusion of it, a mimicry learned by watching people who once meant what they offered.
It was the hand of a puppeteer reclaiming what was his, reaching not for a companion but for a wayward marionette that had dared, however briefly, to imagine it was free.
His fingers curled slightly, inviting, summoning, commanding.
"Come now," he whispered, voice dipped in coaxing sweetness so laced with venom it almost glowed.
"Let's explore the attic. It's been waiting for someone like you. It doesn't scream often, I swear. Except only when it remembers."
Above them, the house responded.
A single creak peeled out from the attic floorboards, a long, drawn groan like a breath held too long and finally exhaled.
The sound stretched into the bones of the building, resonant, and with it came the drifting of dust in fractured columns of dying light.
The air grew colder, as if the attic had stirred at the mention of itself and smiled without lips.
Something unseen adjusted, as though the house had been listening the entire time and now, at last, leaned in closer.
And just then, a flicker crossed Hyeonjae's face, not a break in performance, but a momentary failure of the mask to hold.
His smile stretched too far, the edges twitching like paper caught in flame.
Beneath it, something shuddered, something that did not wish to be seen.
His eyes narrowed, but the gleam in them didn't fade; it intensified, it became precise, predatory, a scalpel of attention honed entirely on Taejun, as though in that creaking breath, the house had remembered and so had he.
Hyeonjae's voice hung in the air like candle smoke, delicate, fragrant, but suffocating the longer it lingered.
"Oh," he breathed, low and reverent, as if Taejun's defiance had conjured something holy.
"Not my friend now?" The words tasted strange in his mouth, rolled slowly off his tongue like something both cherished and condemned.
He stepped forward, not fast, not sudden, but with the quiet precision of something past remembering how to stalk.
The air around him seemed to contract, and the hallway behind him darkened, as though the house, too, had recoiled, then leaned forward, hungry to hear more.
"Not staying here, are you not?" he echoed again, the tilt of his head too smooth, too puppet-like to be human.
"You say that as if choice is something you still own. As if it jingles beside your keys or hides in your sock like a talisman against what's coming."
His voice deepened, not in volume, but in texture.
It was velvet dipped in ink, sliding into the ears and staining everything it touched. "But Taejun… this isn't your story anymore."
He took another step. And now the floor groaned, not beneath him, but beneath Taejun, as though the boards had recognized their new tenant.
"You wandered too close to the thread," Hyeonjae whispered, eyes gleaming, "and now it wraps around you, tight as a noose, warm as a promise, whether you like it or not."
He leaned forward until they were almost eye to eye, the smile now unmoving, eerily fixed.
"But I admire your spirit," he said gently, like a man admiring a candle before he snuffs it out.
"Defiance makes the fall so much more beautiful."
Then he straightened, his laughter low and warm, echoing faintly through the brittle rafters like a lullaby hummed by something long-buried and wrong.
"You'll stay, Taejun," he murmured, turning slowly toward the shadowed stairs that led up to the attic. "Even if you don't walk with me... the house will see to that."
And with that, he ascended a step, boots vanishing into the gloom above, leaving behind only the whisper of his breath and the sickly sweet scent of inevitability.
For a moment, silence stretched between them, fragile and sharp, hanging in the air like the delicate edge of shattered glass, ready to cut.
Then Hyeonjae's laughter spilled forth, deep, resonant, and oddly jubilant, as if something twisted inside him had finally ruptured, releasing a joy too corrupted to be called human.
"Ahhh, so dramatic," he murmured, his voice a velvet purr laced with mockery and something colder still, like winter pretending to be kind. "You remind me of the last time I was with someone here before. He always scowling, always resisting, always gripping that brittle little belief that this isn't how the world should work."
He leaned in then, slow and smooth, his breath brushing against the stillness like poison in perfume. "But by the third hour, he was begging to stay. The house showed him things, beautiful, terrible things. Things that rewrote the shape of his fear until he mistook it for truth. And oh, how he learned to love it. Oh, what an unrequited love."
He straightened with a dancer's grace, brushing phantom dust from his sleeves as though discarding someone else's ashes.
The smile returned, not warm, but sharp enough to draw blood with a glance.
"But it's fine. You'll come around. The house waits with a patience that borders on devotion... but I? I'm far less merciful."
Then, with a carefree wave of his hand, Hyeonjae turned and began drifting deeper into the shadowed corridor, humming a twisted lullaby that might have belonged to a burning building, soft, broken, and full of desperate sorrow.
Taejun stood alone now, trembling at the threshold of something vast and unspeakable, its presence both terrifying and eerily smiling, a predator waiting patiently for its prey to surrender.
Slowly, deliberately, Hyeonjae reached back and took Taejun's hand with a strange, careful gentleness, as if guiding a fragile doll, a cherished plaything clutched by a child who hadn't yet learned the difference between love and possession.
And in that moment, the house itself seemed to inhale. Its old bones flexed in silence, the air tightening like the breath held before a scream.
It began to breathe, not with lungs, but with walls that remembered too much and floorboards aching with memory, aware, and starving.
Taejun hesitated at the bottom of the crooked ladder, staring up into the attic's yawning mouth.
The dim hatch above pulsed faintly in the dark, exhaling a warmth that clung too closely to the skin.
It wasn't comforting; it felt like a breath on the back of the neck when no one is there, like a memory misremembered.
He suddenly thought of sitting too close to an old stove in winter, not for warmth, but for fear of what lived in the cold behind him.
The silence up there wasn't silence at all; it was waiting, and it had been waiting long before Taejun ever arrived.
Hyeonjae tilted his head a little further, that upside-down smile becoming less playful now, almost mournful, as if some distant ache had momentarily bled through the cracks in his mask.
"I know you," he repeated, softer this time, as though it wasn't a declaration, but a promise.
"You walk like someone always expecting to be interrupted. You speak like every word might be the wrong one. You sleep with your back to the wall, don't you? Even when the bed's too small."
He let out a breath that might have been a sigh, or a laugh too tired to finish. "You're not hard to read, Taejun. You're just hoping no one bothers to look closely."
Taejun's mouth parted slightly, but no sound came out.
That weight in the air, that invisible pressure, it wasn't just around him anymore, it was inside him, like the echo of an old wound pressed too hard.
He stared up at Hyeonjae, not with fear now, but with the stunned stillness of someone who's just heard their secrets spoken aloud in a voice that didn't ask permission.
And above him, the attic waited.
"I know what you've carried," Hyeonjae said softly, his voice dipping into a gentle, almost fatherly cadence, like a lullaby meant to soothe a frightened child.
"And I know what you buried— not under dirt or stone, but in those tiny, quiet spaces between your heartbeats, where even you forgot to look. I was there, Taejun. Or at least something wearing my face was."
He tilted his head with a slow, thoughtful motion, tapping a finger against his temple as if unlocking a secret.
"You don't remember yet. But soon enough, you will. Memory has its strange way of slipping sideways, especially in a house like this. One that feeds on forgotten things."
Taejun's fingers curled lightly around the first rung of the ladder, his breath catching just a little as the weight of those words settled over him.
Then, with a cautious voice threaded with curiosity, he said, "Hey... ahjusshi. How do you even know my name? I never told you."
Hyeonjae paused halfway up, his figure framed by shadows, then glanced down with a soft smile that flickered in his eyes like warm candlelight.
For a moment, the usual edge in his voice softened. Then a gentle laugh escaped him, light and easy, echoing quietly down the corridor. "Yah, 'how do you know my name, ahjusshi?' Really? Ahjusshi?"
He shook his head in mock disbelief and pointed at himself with playful exaggeration. "Do I look that old to you? I swear, this face still gets mistaken for a college kid at cafes, and they usually ask me for homework help."
Taejun lifted an eyebrow, deadpan but unable to hide the faintest twitch of a smile. "You were humming trot music earlier."
Hyeonjae chuckled softly, the sound like a warm breeze stirring dry leaves. "Ah, that old thing. It sneaks out when I'm feeling nostalgic or when the house gets a little too quiet."
His gaze softened, and for a flicker of a moment, he looked less like a predator and more like someone who once knew loneliness all too well. "You know, sometimes it's easier to hum a tune than to say what's really on your mind."
Taejun swallowed, the cold edge of the house pressing at his back, but something about that fragile warmth in Hyeonjae's voice unsettled him even more.
"Maybe," he murmured, "but I'm not sure I want to hear your music just yet."
Hyeonjae's smile lingered, gentle and knowing, as if he understood every quiet fear that folded behind those words.
"That's alright," he said softly. "There's no rush. This tour can wait. But I can't promise it'll be patient forever."
"Because it's classy!" Hyeonjae called down, mock-offended but grinning wide enough to catch the flicker of light like a rogue flame. "And don't you dare change the subject now."
He looked up at Taejun fully, his eyes settling on him with a gentleness that surprised, less of the usual teasing predator, more something quietly human. The way he held the ladder felt different, too, like the careful grip of an older cousin coaxing a reluctant kid to climb higher, to see beyond the edge.
"I heard it," he said simply, voice softening. "Sometimes this house speaks, but only if you know how to listen. Your name was already floating in the air the moment you stepped past the gate."
He tapped the side of his temple lightly, like a secret unlocked. "Or maybe... I just remembered it before you said it. Things can get strange here. Time isn't always polite, sometimes it stumbles, sometimes it whispers."
Taejun blinked, words caught somewhere between disbelief and a strange, uneasy wonder.
He didn't know how to respond, so he just let the silence stretch, then began climbing, one deliberate step after another, drawn forward by a thread he couldn't quite name.
The attic welcomed him with a strange kind of warmth, not the comforting, cozy kind, but something older, more intimate, like stepping into a place someone once loved deeply and never quite left behind.
A low oil lamp flickered softly on a wobbly table, its flame dancing in a breeze that seemed to drift through cracks that shouldn't have existed.
Furniture lay shrouded beneath thick, dusty sheets that shifted subtly, as if breathing in the stillness.
The walls themselves curved inward just enough to feel like an embrace, both protective and confining.
Taejun blinked, swallowing a quiet surprise. "It's… not what I expected."
No, the attic was nothing like what he'd imagined.
Warm pools of lamplight glowed from oil lanterns strung carefully across the low wooden beams, casting gentle shadows that seemed to pulse with quiet life.
The old furniture, though draped and forgotten, felt almost reverent rather than threatening; there were no stains of blood, no rattling chains, no muffled screams tucked away in corners.
Instead, the air was thick with the scent of cedar and worn wood, punctuated by the faint creak of rocking chairs that rocked of their own accord, slow and steady, like the heartbeat of the house itself.
Scattered about the room were things that seemed out of place, things that whispered of forgotten stories and secrets that should never have been unearthed.
A school backpack lay crumpled in the corner, the faded initials "T.J." stitched into the worn leather, except Taejun had thrown that bag away years ago, long before he thought he'd need it again.
Nearby, a photograph rested against a dusty beam, capturing a boy of ten standing stiffly in front of a house that felt completely foreign to him.
And tucked beneath a rickety chair, a stuffed animal with one glassy eye missing slumped quietly, as if it had been waiting here, patient and silent, all this time.
Taejun's breath hitched, his eyes widening as disbelief tangled with a slow, creeping unease. "This… this is impossible," he whispered, voice trembling with something unspoken.
Hyeonjae glided past him, brushing a speck of dust from his coat with a grand, theatrical flick, as if dismissing the whole attic's mysteries like a trivial inconvenience. "There's no blood, no bats, no curses carved into the floorboards. I'm quite disappointed. You?"
Taejun's gaze remained locked on the strange relics of his past. "No," he finally said, voice low and unsure. "I... just confused."
Hyeonjae turned then, his eyes catching Taejun's with a sharpness that softened into something almost tender, an expression that was heartbreakingly close to affection, if only for a heartbeat.
"Would it be so terrible," he murmured, voice falling soft like ash drifting down a chimney, "to let someone care for you? Just for a little while? I could show you things no father ever could. I can teach you how not to break when the world tries to snap you in two."
Taejun swallowed, the lump in his throat thick and raw.
The attic seemed to breathe with him, expanding and contracting at once, filled with memories that were not quite his own and feelings that knotted deep inside, strange and unfamiliar.
And Hyeonjae stood there, impossibly warm, impossibly wild, like a shadow that longed to be family, quietly folding himself into the edges of Taejun's world.
"Good," Hyeonjae said, clapping his hands once, the sharp sound breaking the silence with surprising kindness. "Confusion's the best place to start. It means your brain hasn't lied to you yet."
He crossed the attic floor with an easy grace and settled onto a dust-covered trunk, patting the spot beside him. "Come on. Sit down. You look like a raccoon cornered by a housecat."
Taejun hesitated, eyes flickering with doubt, then lowered himself onto the trunk, cautious, as if expecting the floor to give way beneath him.
For a long moment, silence stretched between them.
The lamp flickered softly, its flame crackling, and somewhere in the corner, a rocking chair creaked once before stilling, as if listening.
"You know," Hyeonjae said quietly at last, the theatrical edge melting away from his voice, "you remind me of someone I haven't met yet."
Taejun blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
Hyeonjae chuckled softly. "Don't worry. That made perfect sense in my head."
He paused, the warmth in his tone deepening. "I'm not trying to scare you, kid. I mean it. I know I'm weird— I hear that all the time. But I'm not here to trick you, or trap you, or whatever your suspicious little brain is whispering."
He turned fully toward Taejun, and for the first time, his eyes held no mischief, only calm, steady seriousness. "I just wanted to talk and show you something. Maybe even make a friend."
Taejun's eyes dropped to his hands.
They trembled, not from fear alone, but from something heavier, something he'd carried so long it had become part of his bones, a weight he didn't know how to set down.
"…You don't even know me."
"No," Hyeonjae admitted softly. "But that doesn't mean I can't care."
Between them, a silence settled, not awkward, but tentative, like two strangers standing on the edge of something uncertain, wondering if it was safe to step closer.
"I've been alone in this house a long time," Hyeonjae said, voice gentler now, quieter, as if sharing a secret.
"Maybe not years, maybe not even days, but long enough to forget how nice it is to talk to someone who doesn't vanish the moment the wind sighs through the cracks. So even if you stay just for tonight— even if you leave and never come back— I'd like to spend this hour with you."
He smiled then, and for once it wasn't sharp or mocking, it was almost normal, human.
"Unless," he added with a teasing lift of his brow, "you've decided I'm some creepy attic spirit who lures boys into tea parties."
Taejun let out a small snort. "You did just show up out of nowhere, smiling like a cult leader."
"I resent that. I'm more of a retired magician or perhaps a knight. A shining armour who saves any princess."
"Sure, ahjusshi."
Hyeonjae groaned dramatically, flopping backward across the trunk like he'd been shot. "You- At least call me hyung!"
"In your dreams, ahjusshi," Taejun said, the corner of his mouth lifting into a smile. A small, fleeting, but real.
A smile of a kid makes when teasing a friend, when, for just a moment, the world isn't so heavy.
"Hey," Hyeonjae muttered, peeking at him upside-down, "you're finally smiling."
Taejun blinked, and to his surprise, he was.
The attic creaked softly around them, but this time it didn't feel like a warning.
It felt like laughter, quiet, worn at the edges.
The kind that belonged to two people who hadn't meant to smile, and somehow did anyway.