Chapter 7 - 6. his residence

❦ 𝐛𝐢𝐝𝐨 ❦

The air in Seoul didn't taste like the salt and freedom of the coast. It pressed against my tongue with the bitterness of wet iron, a dense metallic tang that lingered long after every breath. It wasn't the honest, brined scent of the sea that clung to skin and hair—it was something heavier, fouler. The smell of damp asphalt after rain. Of rusted rails. Of a city whose bones were steel and whose pulse never slowed enough to let anything breathe.

Near Seoul Station, the night felt irrelevant. Time dissolved under fluorescent lights and glowing signboards, reduced to schedules and departures. People poured across the streets in relentless currents, shoulders brushing, footsteps colliding, umbrellas dripping forgotten rain onto concrete that never fully dried. Their faces passed like reflections on glass—sharp for a moment, then gone—eyes fixed forward, always forward, as if stopping would mean sinking.

Watching them, I felt suspended outside of it all. Detached. As though I were looking at a world that no longer acknowledged me as part of it. No one glanced up at the sky. No one searched for the moon or the memory of daylight. Perhaps they had forgotten the sun entirely. Or perhaps, in this city, remembering it simply wasn't useful. Here, life was governed by neon, by arrivals and delays, by the hum of trains sliding into platforms like mechanical heartbeats. Stars had no authority in a place like this.

Inside the car, the silence wrapped itself around me more tightly than the night outside. The windows sealed us off from the chaos, turning the city into a muted film that played without sound. Streetlamps flashed across his face as he drove, illuminating sharp lines—his jaw set, his grip steady on the wheel. He didn't look tired. He didn't look lost. He looked like someone who knew exactly where he was going, even if he didn't know why.

"I left my phone at the sea," I said.

The words came out quietly, but they landed with weight. They felt irreversible the moment they escaped my mouth, as if saying them aloud had locked the decision into place.

He shifted, just slightly. His eyes flicked toward me before returning to the road. Concern creased his expression, genuine and unguarded.

"That's a big deal," he said after a pause. "Was there any important data on it…?"

I lowered my gaze to the bundle resting in my lap. Cloth wrapped around something solid, tied carefully, deliberately. My fingers traced the knots without thinking, pressing into the familiar ridges as if they might answer for me.

"Not really," I replied.

It wasn't entirely a lie. Everything that mattered had already burned itself into memory.

"Then let's get a new one tomorrow," he said, his tone gentle, practical. An easy solution offered like a bridge over deep water. "If you ever need it again, just let me know."

Outside, the city bled color across the glass—cold blues, sterile whites, the occasional violent red of brake lights flaring like open wounds. The reflections warped my face, fractured it, turned me into someone I barely recognized.

"No," I murmured. The word barely stirred the air. "It's fine."

I hesitated, then added, softer still, "I left it behind intentionally."

He didn't press me. The car continued forward, obedient to lanes and signals, as if it understood restraint better than people ever did.

The phone was gone. Along with it, every unread message. Every name that still had the power to tighten my chest. Every photograph that froze moments I didn't know how to live with anymore. It wasn't an accident. It was an offering. A quiet severing. The waves had taken it without judgment, erasing its weight with salt and endless motion.

As Seoul swallowed us whole, steel and light closing in from all sides, I held the bundle tighter against myself. Some things aren't misplaced. Some things aren't stolen or forgotten.

Some things are abandoned on purpose.

And some things—once surrendered—can never be retrieved.

---

I entered the house, and the silence struck me all at once—thick, overwhelming, almost physical. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of an empty place, but something heavier, more deliberate, as though the house itself were restraining a breath it had been holding for far too long. The space felt immense, swallowing sound before it could fully exist. Even my footsteps seemed hesitant, careful not to disturb whatever lingered here unseen.

Despite its size, the house was unmistakably arranged for two people. Not abandoned. Not neglected. Every piece of furniture stood exactly where it was meant to be, aligned with an invisible routine that had once governed this space. The chairs were angled toward one another, close enough for conversation, distant enough to respect habit. A table sat between them—not merely functional, but intimate, bearing the quiet implication of shared meals and unspoken understanding. It felt as though the occupants had stepped out only moments ago, leaving behind the faint afterimage of their daily life.

I could almost see it—the subtle choreography of mornings and evenings, the unremarkable gestures that slowly become sacred through repetition. Cups lifted, chairs pulled back, footsteps moving in familiar patterns. The air still remembered them, even if they were gone.

My gaze shifted to the man walking ahead of me. His back was straight, his steps measured, as if he had long since learned how to move through this silence without breaking it. I found myself wondering, uninvited and uneasy, Was Mr. Shin alone back then too? The question lingered without an answer, gnawing at me as I tried to reconcile the careful warmth of this home with the stillness that now dominated it.

"When will your wife return?" I asked.

My voice cut through the quiet sharper than I intended, echoing faintly against the walls before dissolving into nothing.

"She'll be fine for now," Mr. Shin replied.

There was a softness in his tone that didn't belong to a man speaking of absence. A faint smile touched his lips—subtle, restrained, but unmistakably real. It wasn't performative or defensive. It was the expression of someone who carried tenderness like a private language.

"Where did she go?" I pressed.

He paused, only briefly, as if weighing whether the answer required more words than he was willing to give.

"…To the sea."

"The sea?" I repeated.

The word felt strangely heavy in my mouth. I watched his silhouette move ahead of me, dark against the muted wallpaper, his presence blending into the house as though he were another fixture—permanent, enduring. There was no doubt in my mind that he loved her. The devotion was everywhere: in the way the house was preserved, in the care with which nothing was disturbed, in the absence that was honored rather than erased.

And yet, as I followed him toward the staircase, unease crept in, cold and persistent.

Why… did he have that kind of relationship with my sister?

The question refused to settle. Like this house, Mr. Shin revealed nothing easily. He was composed, orderly, silent—but silence, I was beginning to realize, often concealed the most complicated truths.

The stairs creaked softly beneath our steps, each sound amplified by the stillness. He stopped at a door and turned to me.

"It's late today," he said. "It's better for you to rest. I'll show you the room where you'll stay. Tomorrow, we'll talk again about the days ahead."

His voice was calm, measured, as though tomorrow were something predictable—something already planned.

But standing there, surrounded by a house full of echoes and unanswered questions, I couldn't shake the feeling that this place was not simply quiet.

It was waiting.

The House of Pale Shadows

The hallway stretched before me like a quiet corridor of memory, long and narrow, steeped in the scent of old wood and something fainter beneath it—dust, age, and a lingering trace of human warmth that had nowhere left to settle. The walls seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, muting the glow of the lamps into something soft and anemic. Each step I took felt deliberate, as though the house itself were registering my presence.

Mr. Shin stood a short distance ahead, his figure composed and still, blending so seamlessly into the space that he might have been part of the structure itself. He gestured toward a door with restrained politeness.

"Here it is," he said. His voice was calm, unhurried. "The bathroom is at the end of the hallway. I'll stay on the first floor."

I nodded, my arms tightening instinctively around the bundle I carried. The cloth was worn, familiar beneath my fingers—the only object that still felt unquestionably mine. As he turned away, the faint brush of fabric against wood echoed too loudly in the silence.

"Call me if you need anything," he added, already halfway down the hall.

The words rose in my throat before I could stop them. "Excuse me."

He paused.

The lamps caught the edge of his profile, casting half his face into shadow. "Yes?"

For a moment, I thought I might say everything. Ask the questions that had been circling my thoughts since I stepped inside this house. But the weight of them pressed me into stillness.

"…Nothing," I whispered.

The word sounded small, almost apologetic. He inclined his head slightly, neither offended nor curious, and continued on. I watched until the darkness near the stairs folded around him, swallowing his presence completely. Only then did I realize I hadn't even thanked him.

I stood there for several seconds longer than necessary, listening to the house settle around me.

When I finally entered the room he had assigned me, the door slid shut with a soft, final sound. The space inside was large—larger than anything I was used to. The ceiling rose higher than comfort demanded, the walls adorned with ornate patterns that felt deliberate, expensive, and untouched. Heavy drapes framed the windows, their fabric absorbing what little light dared to enter.

It was beautiful.

And unbearably cold.

"This is a nice room…" I thought.

The words felt rehearsed, hollow even in my own mind. Compliments belonged to warmth, to gratitude, to comfort. None of those lived here.

I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the pristine order of the space. The mattress dipped slightly beneath my weight, the only acknowledgment that I was real. The silence pressed against my ears until it felt loud, almost ringing.

In that quiet, her voice surfaced.

"If we go to Seoul, let's live together in a pretty house."

The memory was too vivid. Too alive. I could hear the way she laughed when she said it, as if the future were something simple, something guaranteed. I looked around again, taking in the wallpaper, the furniture, the symmetry of it all.

Pretty wasn't the word I would have chosen.

Eerie. Heavy. Melancholic.

But perhaps this was what she liked. Perhaps she would have loved the somber elegance of this place, the way it carried its history without apology. Perhaps she would have found comfort in its quiet restraint.

Mr. Shin's face intruded on my thoughts—pale, composed, gentle in a way that felt practiced. In the darkness, he had seemed almost kind. A man shaped by loss rather than malice.

And yet.

When the light had struck him at just the wrong angle, when shadow and illumination crossed in a way they shouldn't have, I had seen it.

His eyes.

Red.

Not vividly, not blazing—but unmistakably wrong. A brief, unsettling glow that lingered in my mind no matter how hard I tried to rationalize it away.

I stared at the closed door, my heart picking up its pace without permission.

Sister, I asked silently, is Mr. Shin a good person?

The room offered no answer.

If he was truly as gentle as he appeared, then why had you died? Why were you pushed into such despair that you chose to leave me behind? I didn't understand the secrets you carried, or the shadows that followed you into this house. I didn't understand how love and ruin could coexist so quietly.

"Will I understand if I stay with Mr. Shin…?" I whispered.

The words dissolved into the air, unanswered.

I lay back slowly, careful, as though the house might react if I moved too abruptly. The ceiling loomed above me, vast and impersonal. The weight of the place settled over my chest—not crushing, but inescapable.

I told myself I would leave tomorrow. I had to.

But for tonight, I was only a guest—lying awake in a house of pale shadows and unspoken truths, surrounded by red eyes and gentle promises, searching for answers in the very place my sister had lost hers.

The Weight of Silence

The air in the morgue was unnaturally cold—sharp enough to sting my lungs with every shallow breath I managed to take. Or perhaps the chill wasn't in the room at all, but spreading outward from my chest, radiating through my limbs until even my fingertips felt numb. I stood there, unmoving, staring down at my sister's face as if willing it to change.

She looked peaceful. Too peaceful. Her features were soft, her expression calm, as though she were merely asleep and would open her eyes if I called her name loudly enough. But the sterile white sheet pulled up to her shoulders, the harsh clinical lights glaring down without mercy, stripped that illusion bare. This wasn't rest. This was final.

I tried to breathe, but my chest refused to obey. Each time my eyes fluttered shut, I saw her as she had been—laughing too loudly, complaining about trivial inconveniences, tugging me along with impatient affection. Those memories crashed against the stillness of her body now, and the contrast was unbearable.

The silence crushed down on me, thick and suffocating. No footsteps. No voices. No life. Just the hum of fluorescent lights and the sound of my own fractured breathing.

The Collapse

When I finally turned away and stepped out of the room, the floor felt unstable beneath my feet, as though the world itself had tilted off its axis. The hallway stretched unnaturally long, warped by grief and disbelief. I walked without direction, without awareness, until my strength gave out.

Mr. Shin was there.

I barely registered his presence at first—only the heaviness of his gaze, filled with something like pity layered over resignation. He looked like a man who had already accepted what I was still refusing to understand.

My knees buckled. I sank to the floor, the strength draining from my body all at once. My hands shook violently as they pressed against the cold tiles, grounding me to something solid before I shattered completely.

How was I supposed to move forward?

Every plan we had whispered about, every future we had imagined together, disintegrated in my mouth like ash. I had lived believing I could protect her. That as long as I stayed close, nothing truly terrible could happen.

And yet, when it mattered most, I had been powerless.

Why her?

The question burned through me, sharp and merciless. It echoed through my skull, unanswered and relentless.

A Spark of Resentment

Mr. Shin's voice reached me through the fog, pulling me back from the edge. He spoke carefully, deliberately—about the clones, about the technology meant to preserve life, to defy loss. His words should have sounded miraculous.

Instead, they felt obscene.

I looked up at him, really looked at him, and something inside me shifted. The numbness cracked, giving way to something colder, harder. A resentment not yet fully formed, but alive.

If this world had the power to replicate bodies, to imitate existence so perfectly—then why was my sister lying motionless behind me?

"I won't let this be the end," I whispered.

My voice broke under the weight of the vow, but the resolve remained. If the truth of this world lived in shadows and manufactured lives, then I would drag it into the light. I would make it scream.

The Secret in the Sickroom

The hallway was silent, but not empty. Every breath I took sounded too loud, every shift of my weight too deliberate. I held my breath instinctively, listening. The air felt charged, tight with something unseen.

At the far end of the corridor stood the heavy wooden doors.

From behind them came a sound—soft, mechanical, disturbingly rhythmic.

Could it be there?

The question barely formed in my mind before curiosity tightened its grip. I moved forward slowly, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to make me dizzy. A thin line of artificial light leaked from beneath the door, pulsing faintly in time with the sound.

I leaned closer.

Hiss.

A sharp pneumatic exhale sliced through the silence. Then another. It reminded me of breathing—steady, measured—but wrong. Like a machine mimicking life.

I pressed my ear against the wood, my pulse roaring in my ears. I couldn't turn back now. With trembling fingers, I pushed the door open just enough to peer inside.

The Discovery

My breath caught painfully in my throat. I slapped a hand over my mouth to stop the sound that threatened to escape.

The room had been transformed.

What should have been a library—a place of paper and dust and quiet thought—had become something clinical and unnatural. Cold light flickered across sleek machinery. In the center of it all sat a medical monitor, its screen alive with jagged yellow lines that danced in time with a relentless sound.

Beep… beep…

The noise drilled straight into my skull.

My gaze followed the cables, the wires, the humming devices—until it landed on the bed.

The Hidden Truth

There she was.

A woman lay motionless beneath thin gray sheets, her skin pale to the point of translucence. She looked fragile, impossibly so, dwarfed by the machinery that surrounded her like watchful sentinels. Tubes and wires traced the outline of her body, feeding, breathing, sustaining.

I stared at her hand resting atop the sheets.

On her ring finger, a diamond caught the flickering light, glinting softly. The detail struck me harder than anything else—a symbol of devotion, of a shared life, reduced now to an ornament on a body tethered to machines.

I swallowed hard.

I'm sure the sound is coming from this room…

The thought echoed uselessly as my mind raced. Who was she? Why was she hidden here, sealed behind heavy doors and layers of silence? And how long had this secret been breathing quietly within the walls of this house?

I took a step back, dread settling deep in my stomach.

In that moment, I understood one thing with terrifying clarity.

I was no longer just a witness.

I was standing inside the heart of a secret that had already destroyed one life—and whatever it was, it had no intention of letting me walk away unchanged.