The sky, covered in thick storm clouds, looked ready to unleash a downpour at any moment. The forecast about the rainy season arriving hadn’t been wrong—it was gloomy even in broad daylight. Mu-ryeong sat on the window ledge, tilting his head back as he gazed up at the sky.
“How long is it going to stay like this...”
On days as overcast as this, spirits with strong yin energy often lost their way and wandered aimlessly. Regular spirits couldn’t roam in the daytime, but those with a bit more power could hide in the elongated shadows. That was why strange occurrences were more common on rainy days.
“The rainy season lasts at least a week,” Seung-joo responded absentmindedly, flipping through his notes from class. He then scolded Mu-ryeong to get down from the window. Mu-ryeong grinned wordlessly and returned to his seat beside him.
“Just one more hour to go, then it’s finally lunchtime.”
“...Did you come to school just to eat?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Yeah... Actually, same.”
With final exams approaching, Seung-joo looked half out of his mind. Unlike Mu-ryeong, he actually put effort into studying, which naturally reflected in his grades.
Mu-ryeong observed him quietly for a moment before speaking as if something had just come to mind.
“Ki Hwan-young is eating lunch with us today.”
“That guy again—” Seung-joo stopped mid-sentence, clicking his tongue in frustration. “That’s not even his real name, you know.”
Mu-ryeong had been bringing up Ki Hwan-young so often that Seung-joo had long stopped listening. But this time, Mu-ryeong responded with conviction.
“No, he knows now.”
“...”
Snap.
Seung-joo’s mechanical pencil broke with a sharp crack. He furrowed his brows, clicking out more lead while letting out a low sigh. Then, as if something clicked, he let out a small exclamation.
“Oh... Right, you two came to school together today.”
Gossip really did spread fast. There had barely been anyone on their way to school this morning, yet the news had already reached Seung-joo. When Mu-ryeong didn’t deny it, Seung-joo simply nodded.
“So what happened?”
“Hmm...”
Instead of answering right away, Mu-ryeong rested his head on the desk with a thoughtful hum. Seung-joo glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
“The request is back on.”
With that, Mu-ryeong shut his eyes. It was his way of saying he wasn’t going to give any more details. Seung-joo sighed but didn’t press further.
“You’re going to sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“You sound so proud of yourself.”
Seung-joo ruffled the back of Mu-ryeong’s head with a rough hand, but he didn’t bother covering him with his gym jacket—he knew it was too hot for that.
Mu-ryeong let his mind drift, recalling the conversation he had with Hwan-young the night before.
“It had been two years since my parents died.”
At first, it had been difficult for Hwan-young to start talking. But once he did, the words came out steadily. Occasionally, his expression stiffened, and he paused mid-sentence, but he didn’t seem unwilling. More like... he wasn’t sure where to begin.
“My parents died in a car accident when I was eight. Back then, my brother and I were too young to take care of ourselves... I think we stayed with one of my mom’s distant relatives.”
The way he spoke was calm and precise, like a monochrome ink painting. He was speaking, yet it felt as though Mu-ryeong was watching a still image frozen in time—a memory painted in black and white.
“It was late at night. I remember seeing something outside my window.”
Even at just ten years old, Hwan-young had known what to do. He had shared a room with his younger brother, but instead of waking him up, he had pulled the blanket over his head, pretending he had seen nothing.
“I wasn’t scared. Like you said, I’d been seeing things like that since I was little. It just felt normal to me.”
“...”
“But then the ghost... called my name.”
Hwan-young.
Just that one word.
And it had been enough to pull him out from under the covers.
Enough to make him get up and open the window to look outside.
“There was something... monstrous. It was huge, pitch-black, and covered in blood—just bleeding endlessly.”
A vengeful spirit.
Even without seeing it himself, Mu-ryeong knew exactly what it must have looked like. Evil spirits lost their human form once their minds rotted away, dripping blood in proportion to their resentment.
“But the funny thing is... I just knew. I thought, ‘Oh. That’s my parents.’”
“...”
“I know it sounds crazy...”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“...”
“You don’t recognize people just by their appearance.”
Exorcists like Mu-ryeong remembered souls by their energy, not their faces.
Hwan-young wasn’t an exorcist, but his spiritual awareness was heightened. Even if his parents no longer had a human form, he had recognized them for what they were.
“...At the time, I didn’t mind it.”
“As long as they were with me, even like that... it was enough.”
Hwan-young had said that about a month had passed since he first started seeing his parents.
They never appeared during the day, only at night, always calling his name.
Mu-ryeong had to fight back the urge to sigh.
“They never came too close. They just hovered nearby.”
That meant they hadn’t completely lost themselves yet.
Even after being drawn to Hwan-young’s spiritual energy, they had held on, resisting the inevitable.
“Even now, I don’t know what happens to people after they die.”
“...”
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“I didn’t know what would happen if a soul lingered too long without passing on.”
Hwan-young lowered his face into his hands and remained silent for a long time.
And when he finally spoke again, he only said one thing.
“On the thirtieth day, they stopped calling my name.”
Mu-ryeong didn’t need to hear the rest to understand.
He already knew what happened next.
His parents, turned into vengeful spirits, must have attacked him.
He could already picture it—what Hwan-young had seen, what he had felt.
“...That’s when I learned to use spiritual energy.”
He didn’t say how he learned it.
He just took a deep breath and let his hands drop to his lap.
His expression was the same as when he had started the story—completely unreadable.
“My younger brother was born five minutes after me.”
Twins.
Born just a few minutes apart, but on different days.
Mu-ryeong remembered the photo in Hwan-young’s room.
Two identical children, standing side by side, grinning with pure, childlike innocence.
“Some fortune teller told my parents that I was destined to ‘consume’ my brother.”
“...”
“The thing is, even before he was born, he kept having near-death experiences.”
Hwan-young’s lips twisted into a bitter smile.
Or rather, a forced smile—his expression was more pained than amused.
“There’s a rule when naming twins.”
“The final consonant in their names has to match. If not, the one with the consonant will consume the other.”
Mu-ryeong had heard of that before.
Mu-heun, always fascinated by shamanism, had mentioned it.
Though, ironically, he dismissed everything except saju reading as superstition.
“My name, ‘Young’, means ‘shadow.’”
Hwan-young’s voice was steady, almost unnervingly so.
But Mu-ryeong felt his stomach tighten.
“My parents must have wanted to protect my brother.”
“They named him Hwan-hee, and gave me the ‘shadow’ character, as if... relying on superstition to keep him safe.”
Mu-ryeong understood.
There was a reason people talked about the “most precious child” in a family.
Just like Seung-joo’s parents overprotected him, it wasn’t hard to imagine that Hwan-young’s family had done the same with Hwan-hee.
“Do you know why I call it superstition?”
Mu-ryeong didn’t answer.
He was already dreading what Hwan-young would say next.
Ever since he had seen that photograph, he had felt a nagging unease.
And sure enough—
“Hwan-hee died when we were twelve.”
“...”
Reality was often crueler than any story or legend.
Mu-ryeong lowered his gaze, feeling a lump in his throat.
He had spent his life listening to the dead, but nothing compared to the suffering of the living.
“A car accident.”
“...”
“Right after I started middle school, I moved into this house.”
The house Hwan-young lived in now had once been his family home.
Mu-ryeong wasn’t just shocked by the fact that Hwan-young had been living alone since he was fourteen.
What was even more shocking was that his relatives had willingly let him live alone.
If Mu-ryeong’s mother had heard that, she would have raged about how irresponsible adults could be.
“Hwan-hee found me not long after I moved in.”
That had been four years ago.
Mu-ryeong felt an uneasy weight settle in his chest.
He already knew the answer to the question forming in his mind, but he had to ask anyway.
“...Where is he now?”
His heart pounded uncomfortably.
Hwan-young, in contrast, remained calm.
But Mu-ryeong could feel it—the tightness in his own chest, the sense that every word in this conversation carried weight.
“You’ve seen him.”
A memory surfaced instantly.
That horrific, foul-smelling, monstrous vengeful spirit.
The ghost with long, disheveled hair, gnawing at Hwan-young’s spiritual barrier.
“...”
That was why Hwan-young’s saju reading had come up as nonexistent.
Born in the Year of the Metal Rat, in the Month of the Earth Rabbit, on the Day of the Water Rabbit, during the Hour of the Rat.
A ‘boy’ who did not exist.
Because he shouldn’t have existed.
“I just... want Hwan-hee to rest in peace.”