If this causes issues, delete it; no disrespect to the artist intended.
All content is unrelated to reality.
Once the bell rang for the last class, the time until evening was ours.
The firewood shed behind the dorm was our little hideout, where even the teachers rarely came.
Seongho took a potato the cafeteria had secretly given him and buried it in the wood stove
A place where Woonhak got scolded by the older guys for napping on top of the firewood pile
Today, five of us got together.
Me, Ihan, Taesan, Jaehyun, and Seongho
Woonhak had sent Jaehyun to the main building on an errand.
Riu didn’t come.
Seongho “Seriously, who made that mud pit?”
Seongho crouched in front of the stove and brushed at the cuffs of his pants.
Dry dirt spilled all over the floor.
Ihan “You said you fell in twice, hyung”
Seongho “It was three times. One time you didn’t see”
Ihan “Why are you bragging about that”
Jaehyun laughed and used the poker to flip the potatoes in the stove.
Jaehyun “Woonhak almost cried in front of the single-plank bridge. I said I’d carry him, but he said it was embarrassing and wouldn’t let me, so it took forever”
Seongho “So you ended up carrying him anyway”
Jaehyun “Yeah”
Everyone laughed.
I laughed too.
For as long as we were laughing, yesterday really did feel like a dream.
Jaehyun pulled out a potato, split it in half, and put one piece in my hand.
Jaehyun “It’s hot, so blow on it before you eat it”
Steam rose up.
My fingers kept trembling as I took the potato.
Taesan didn’t take a potato.
Leaning against the firewood pile, he was slowly taking off his glasses and wiping them.
For a long time
Then he put his glasses back on and looked at me.
Taesan “Hana, you went to the north woods yesterday, didn’t you”
The shed fell silent.
A piece of firewood popped in the stove.
Seongho “What? Why would you go there”
Seongho almost laughed, then stopped.
Taesan didn’t look at Seongho.
Taesan “I saw the red dirt on your shoes. At lunchtime, Ihan covered for you instead”
Ihan lowered his head.
Taesan “And earlier, after detention, I saw what the teacher drew on the record sheet”
Taesan “There was a red circle next to your name. None of the other kids’ names had one”
The potato in my hand was going cold.
Jaehyun set down the poker.
Jaehyun “…Hana, did something happen?”
Taesan “Tell us”
Taesan’s voice dropped a little.
Taesan “I’ve felt something was off ever since yesterday, but I keep thinking it’s no big deal. That’s what feels even more wrong”
Ihan closed his eyes.
And gave a very small nod.
I told them everything.
Yuri noona’s note, the iron door, the black empty space, the voice begging to be saved
And the principal and Teacher Yoon standing in front of it
Even what Ihan had seen two years ago
When I finished, the shed went quiet.
All I could smell was the burning potatoes in the stove.
Seongho “That’s impossible”
Seongho was the first to speak. His voice was shaking.
Seongho “My brother went out the door three years ago too. He never sent a letter, but that’s because he always hated writing…”
His voice trailed off.
Seongho clenched and unclenched his fists.
Jaehyun didn’t say a word.
Instead, he closed his eyes, pressing a hand to his temple.
Hana “Are you okay, oppa?”
Jaehyun “This is weird”
Jaehyun said quietly.
Jaehyun “It feels like this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. I don’t know where, but… my head is ringing”
Because the person who had heard the exact same story in this shed two years ago that night was Jaehyun
Taesan “We need proof”
Taesan adjusted his glasses.
Taesan “The graduation files should be in the records room on the second floor of the main building. If we find Seongmin hyung’s file, we can check whether he really went out the door”
Hana “What about the matron’s patrol?”
Taesan “At 11:10 on the second floor, at 11:40 on the first. The main building stairs have forty-two steps, and the ones that creak are the seventeenth and the thirtieth”
Taesan grinned at me.
Taesan “That was the quiz answer that day. That’s why I was counting”
Seongho “I’ll go in”
Seongho stood up.
Seongho “He’s my brother”
No one stopped him.
Tonight at 11:15
Taesan would keep watch on the landing, and Jaehyun and Ihan would guard the dorm hallway.
Seongho and I were going into the records room.
Jaehyun “Just pretend to drink the evening moon tea, everyone”
Jaehyun said.
Jaehyun “Like Ihan”
Dinner bell rang.
We left the shed one by one.
I was the last one out, and I closed the door.
The moment I turned toward the main building, I stopped walking.
Someone was standing under the eaves of the main building across the playground.
Without an umbrella
It was Riu.
Riu was looking toward the shed.
No, he was looking at me.
When our eyes met, Riu slowly turned around and went into the main building.
The dining hall smelled strongly of honey.
Five cups tilted one after another toward the flowerpots.
Seongho pretended to take a sip, choked, and coughed
Taesan pretended to wipe his glasses and lowered his cup beneath his knee.
Jaehyun kept watching until Woonhak’s cup was empty.
The youngest, still knowing nothing, raised his hand and asked for another cup.
Riu sat in the seat at the very end.
He was holding a cup, but I never saw him drink.
Every time I looked, Riu was looking somewhere else.
11:15
The rain had already stopped.
The main building stairs were pitch-black.
Taesan pressed himself against the landing and held up three fingers.
It was the signal to go.
I counted the steps in my head.
Fifteen, sixteen
I skipped the seventeenth.
Twenty-nine
I skipped the thirtieth too.
I could hear Seongho behind me holding his breath.
The records room door was locked.
Seongho braced his shoulder against the frame and pushed up, and the worn latch gave way weakly.
Seongho “…Is it really okay for it to be this easy?”
Hana “Shh”
It smelled dusty.
One entire wall was lined with wooden drawers.
Each drawer was labeled with a year.
Moonlight leaking through the window dimly lit the numbers.
Seongho opened the drawer from three years ago.
There was only one folder
Because there had only been one graduate that year
There was a name on the cover.
Park Seongmin
Seongho’s hand was trembling.
On the first page was a photo of a little boy.
A face smiling exactly like Seongho’s
Below it were height, weight, and detention test scores, densely packed in rows.
Seongho flipped through it one page at a time.
Age twelve, thirteen, fourteen
The face in the photos grew older bit by bit.
And then the last page
It was a graduation certificate.
The Eunha Home stamp was neatly pressed on it.
The line below the graduation date
Destination
Gate — third floor
Seongho “…Third floor?”
Seongho traced the words with his fingertips.
Seongho “So it’s not out the door, it’s a door. But what does the floor mean?”
I couldn’t answer.
There was no building with three floors on the island.
I opened the other drawers.
Four years ago, five years ago, seven years ago
At the end of every folder, there was the same graduation certificate.
What was written in the destination line wasn’t the sea or a ship.
Gate — first floor
Gate — second floor
Gate — first floor
Gate — fourth floor
In the top drawer, there was a folder dated yesterday.
Chae Yuri
The ink in the destination line hadn’t fully dried yet, and it smeared onto my fingertips.
Gate — first floor
I rubbed my fingertips against my skirt.
It didn’t come off.
Then, from the stairs, knock knock
It was Taesan’s signal.
Someone’s coming.
Seongho and I ducked under the desk.
Seongho was clutching Park Seongmin’s folder tightly to his chest.
The door opened and lamplight came in.
It was Teacher Yoon.
Even though it wasn’t patrol time
The teacher stood in front of the drawers and pulled out a new folder.
He wrote something on the cover.
Scratch scratch
The sound of the pen was louder than my heartbeat.
The teacher placed the folder on top of Yuri noona’s file in the top drawer.
And then paused for a moment.
The lamplight slowly swept around the room once.
The light stopped right in front of the desk leg.
I couldn’t breathe.
Teacher Yoon “…There are a lot of rats”
The teacher muttered it like talking to himself, then left.
The door closed.
Only after the footsteps had fully faded did I crawl out and open the drawer.
A new folder
Neat handwriting was written on the cover.
Additional scheduled graduates
The name field was blank.
I opened the folder.
The very first thing clipped inside was the machine-printed sheet I had torn from my head this afternoon.
A red circle beside the wildly shaking needle mark
And after that, my test paper was inside.
On the last page, the answers I had written were 그대로 there.
Rain umbrella waving Yuri noona
There was one character written in red pen over my handwriting.
Lie
Hello, it’s Hiki!
If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment and a like
