The silence in the apartment felt heavier than the screams had been.
It clung to the walls like soot, thick and still, as if the very air was afraid to move around him.
Taejun sat hunched on the floor of his small bedroom, his back against the wall, knees drawn to his chest, soaked sleeves pressed against his eyes to stop the shaking that wouldn't stop.
His brother had brought him here after the collapse in the hallway, had said nothing as he helped him stand, trembling like a leaf, legs refusing to lock properly.
His brother had taken him in with wide, terrified eyes, leading him into the bedroom with the kind of stillness usually reserved for funerals.
There was no mother in the apartment, not anymore.
The lights flickered as if the building remembered something it wasn't supposed to.
Taejun could still feel her breath on the back of his neck, except it wasn't her, never had been, and now every time he blinked he saw her face sliding off in ribbons, that smile carved too deep, that scent like burnt soap and old blood that had no business being in a human home.
He didn't speak, not at first, just rocked slightly, silently, watching the wall in front of him, and seeing the hallway over and over again, the thing scraping down the wood with fingers too long, whispering to him with lips that weren't lips, promising love that smelled like slaughter.
His brother sat across from him, cross-legged on the floor, silent, arms wrapped around his knees like he was trying to become smaller, waiting, not interrupting.
His eyes kept shifting from Taejun's pale face to the bruises on his arms to the torn skin around his neck, where something's hand had nearly pulled him back in.
Taejun's voice, when he finally spoke, was barely more than a breath. "Was it really… Mom, hyung?"
His brother flinched, his head jerked once, violently, like his spine had been struck.
He shook it hard. "No. It was wearing her. It was pretending. It's just, it-it wasn't her."
His voice cracked, rough and dry like something had clawed its way up from his stomach and left his throat ruined.
"It was something else. She's not— she's not here."
"But I heard her," his brother whispered. "Before I opened the door. I swear, hyung. She said my name. I thought— I thought she was home."
His brother's fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt so tightly that the knuckles turned white.
"That's what it wants you to feel, maybe. That's how it talks. It knows what you miss."
His eyes flicked toward the hallway like he expected the door to open again, to reveal some warped parody of his brother, stitched together from the memories he was trying so hard to bury.
"It copies her voice. It laughed when I called her name."
Taejun didn't respond.
He looked down, fingers twisting into his pants, his small face tight with confusion, fear, and something else, pity.
For the first time in their life, he was seeing his older brother not as a protector, not as someone bigger and stronger who could carry the weight of the world, but as a boy broken into too many pieces to gather back.
The room remained quiet for minutes that dragged like hours.
The clock on the wall ticked too loudly.
At some point, Taejun stood, slow and unsteady, and made his way to the bathroom.
He splashed cold water on his face, stared at himself in the mirror.
What stared back looked nothing like the boy from that morning, pale, blood-streaked.
Eyes red and sunken like something had crawled behind them and was watching through.
He leaned closer.
For a split second, he thought the reflection smiled.
A different smile, wider.
He stumbled backward, knocking over the toothbrush holder, clutching the doorframe as his lungs collapsed again, his breath shallow and fast.
His brother appeared in the doorway. "You okay?"
Taejun didn't answer.
His brother stepped in, picked up the fallen brush silently, and waited. "It's not real,"
Taejun muttered. "I'm not— I'm not bringing it back. It's just shock. It's a trauma effect. This is what they say it does. Hallucinations. Stress. You see things you don't usually see."
He didn't sound convinced.
He didn't believe himself, but he needed to say it.
He needed to make the horror feel like something explainable. "It wasn't real. Just an episode. A… A breakdown. I was alone too long. I saw something. A dead body. And then…"
"You think you imagined all of it?" his brother asked, quiet. "Even when the hallway disappeared?"
"I don't know," Taejun said, voice nearly breaking. "Maybe."
He crouched down, covering his face again, rocking slightly.
"Maybe I'm not okay. Maybe something snapped. But it doesn't feel fake. It felt like… like it wanted to keep me. Like it knew I wasn't going to be missed for a while. Like it had done this before."
His brother didn't answer.
He stood silently in the doorway, then slowly sat down beside him.
They didn't talk much after that.
The night stretched, warped, and slowed.
At one point, the light above the dining table flickered twice, and Taejun felt his heart stop.
He stared at the ceiling for a full ten minutes, barely breathing, expecting the door to creak or the wallpaper to bleed.
Nothing happened.
But neither of them slept.
And his brother, despite everything, stayed by his side, afraid, confused, doubting, but not leaving.
And in his silence, Taejun could feel it: the disbelief hadn't faded, but something else had taken root.
Pity.
And that pity hurt more than anything.
At some hour far beyond midnight, when the world outside had lost even the faint hum of distant traffic and the moonlight through the window had dimmed behind swollen clouds, the apartment began to feel too still.
It wasn't quiet, quiet would've been a mercy.
It was a thick, suffocating hush, a pressure that tightened around their chests as if the walls were listening.
Taejun hadn't moved from the corner of the room.
His back had gone stiff against the floorboard, and his legs had stopped trembling not from comfort but from exhaustion.
The moments stretched long between blinks, and every time his eyelids closed, he saw that room again, the one at the end of the hall in that twisted school where the walls bent inward, where the lightbulbs pulsed like arteries, where the thing had waited with its mouth open and his mother's voice leaking out between rows of too-many teeth.
He had stopped trying to convince himself it was all a hallucination.
The bruises were real.
The blood had dried under his nails.
And his brother, who still hadn't left his side, had heard it too.
They didn't speak, not because there was nothing left to say, but because the air felt too dense to carry sound properly, like words would only drag whatever was watching closer.
Taejun's eyes stayed fixed on the hallway outside the door.
It looked normal now, perfectly normal.
He could see the edges of the family photo hanging beside the bathroom, the scuffed molding, the same flickering bulb that always blinked once every few minutes.
And yet his stomach coiled every time it blinked, waiting for the hallway to warp again, to stretch like soft meat, to pulse with that impossible heat.
Somewhere around three in the morning, his brother spoke, barely a whisper, like he was afraid the apartment would hear him. "Hyung… what if she's still out there?"
His brother didn't answer at first.
His throat tightened with the kind of pain that didn't come from injury, but from grief that hadn't found a place to go.
The memory of her voice in that hallway, the warmth of it, the gentleness, slashed through him like a fresh wound, tainted now by the thing that had worn it like a mask. "She's gone," he said eventually.
"She wouldn't… she wouldn't do that. That wasn't her. That thing, whatever it is, uses her. It knows what hurts."
Taejun didn't respond.
His eyes were wide, glossy, and tired, but his fingers inched closer and found Taejun's wrist.
"I believe you now," he whispered.
"I didn't before. But I do. Even if I don't understand… I believe you."
The softness of those words nearly made Taejun cry, but the tears never came.
His body had wrung itself dry hours ago.
All that remained was the ache, deep in his chest, lodged behind his ribs like broken glass.
But the moment didn't last.
The walls gave a single shudder.
A sound like drywall groaning beneath pressure it shouldn't have.
His brother shot to his feet, dragging Taejun up with him.
"Stay here," he hissed, his voice trembling, but his grip ironclad.
"If I tell you to run, run to the neighbors. Don't look back. Do you understand?"
Taejun nodded, too terrified to argue.
They crept toward the door.
The hallway was empty.
The light flickered once, twice, then went dark.
His brother reached for the switch, but it no longer responded.
The floor felt warmer than it should have, like heat rising from beneath, like breath through cracks.
Then, softly, a shuffle.
A bare foot dragging across the floor just beyond the corner, near the kitchen.
He froze, grabbing his brother and backing them slowly toward the bedroom again, but it was too late.
From around the corner, she stepped out.
Their mother.
She wore her house slippers.
The yellow ones with the faded cartoon bears.
Her nightgown was creased from sleep, her hair tangled and falling around her face in that familiar, tired way.
She blinked at them like she was confused. "Taejun?"
Her voice was the same, warm and worried. "Are you still awake?"
Taejun's blood turned to ice. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
She took a step forward.
Her eyes looked real.
Her hands.
Her face.
But something was off.
The shadows clung too tightly to her outline.
The kitchen light behind her should've lit her back, but there was no reflection, no glow.
Just shape and darkness.
A puppet pulled from somewhere deep and wrong.
"Taejun, why are you crying? Who hurt you?" she asked.
Her voice trembled with concern, but it no longer matched her eyes.
They were glassy, staring too long. Not blinking enough. "Come here. Let me hold you."
Taejun whimpered beside his brother, hiding behind his arm. "Hyung…"
The thing stepped closer.
Its feet didn't make a sound now, not even the creak of old floorboards.
Taejun backed up until they hit the bedroom door.
He shoved his brother behind him, heart roaring, voice trembling.
"You're not her," he spat, though the words cut his own throat to say.
"She's dead. Or gone. Or, anywhere but this. You're not her. Stop wearing her face."
The thing tilted its head. The lips parted.
And it smiled.
Not her smile, not anymore.
Something wet split down the center of its face.
A crack forming from the scalp down the nose, peeling the skin in half.
Something inside writhed, greasy, dark, pushing through the seams.
The arms elongated.
The neck twitched, then jolted sideways like it had been hit.
Its jaw opened too wide, and the voice came out broken. "You missed me."
Taejun screamed, grabbed his brother, as his brother threw the door open.
They fled down the hall, past the dark bathroom, past the fridge humming too loudly, toward the front door.
The knob wouldn't turn.
He yanked, twisted, and kicked, but it stuck.
The hallway behind them creaked, slow steps.
That smell again, wet rot and iron and mold.
His brother shrieked as something heavy thudded against the floorboards.
Just as Taejun's voice broke from crying out, the door clicked.
Opened, from the other side, a hand reached in.
His real brother.
His real older brother, the one he remembered from before the school, before the blood. "Taejun?" he cried. "Taejun, get out!"
Taejun fell through the doorway, dragging his younger brother with him.
They collapsed in the hallway outside, gasping, shaking, arms around each other as the door slammed shut behind them.
And for the first time that night, his brother sobbed.
Not from fear, not from the pain in his chest or the blood on his hands, but from the unbearable, endless grief of knowing the thing wearing his mother's face still stood inside that apartment, watching them through the peephole with a face she used to wear.
The neighbors never opened their doors.
No one else came, and the night went on.