1. The Silhouette of the Abyss (Past, Seung-hwa’s House, Night)
The inner room was a place where even the faint moonlight, trickling down the earthen walls, dared not invade. Beyond the yellowed paper-screen door, a bizarrely massive, pitch-black shadow wavered like a phantom. It was a silhouette of a demon wearing human form. Along with the beastly, ragged breathing, that dark shadow ripped through the silence, ruthlessly descending upon the defenseless girl.
Outside the door, in a corner of the freezing wooden floor completely stripped of warmth, stood fifteen-year-old Seung-hwa. The boy's fists were clenched so tight that his flesh seemed on the verge of tearing and his bones snapping outward; his jaw, biting down hard, trembled faintly. Tears—a chaotic cocktail of absolute helplessness and a chest-lacerating fury—streamed down his cheeks. Those tears were redder than blood, hotter than any inferno.
Over this hellish landscape of memory stood thirty-year-old present-day Seung-hwa like a transparent afterimage. He stood completely motionless, blankly staring down at his younger self, eternally preserved within that past misfortune. Devoid of both sorrow and anger now, his vacant eyes held nothing but a deep, unfathomable void.
2. The Room of Hallucinations (Past, The Small Room, Night)
It was a night when all the air inside the room froze bone-chillingly cold. Out of the pitch-black darkness, a sudden auditory hallucination, piercing the nerves like a sharp needle, shattered the stillness. It was the youthful, agonizing voice of ten-year-old Yeong-ae.
"Save me. Please... Stepfather... save me."
In the dark corner of the room, curled up like a fetus on the dusty, freezing floor, fifteen-year-old Seung-hwa covered his ears with both hands. Yet, no matter how hard he blocked his ears, his younger sister’s shrieks carved into his bones and bored into his brain, making him writhe and flail his entire body in pure agony. This was the cruel mechanism by which the guilt—branded deep into the absolute bottom of his heart—tortured and hollowed him out every single night.
3. The Noose That Chokes (Present, Seung-hwa’s Room, Day)
Through a tiny sliver in the heavy blackout curtains draped over the window, a solitary strand of fragile sunlight seeped in like a capillary vessel. Yet, that feeble light failed to banish the dense gloom of the room, only casting a bizarre illumination upon the dust motes drifting through the air. Light and shadow blended without boundaries, giving the room a sinister and melancholy atmosphere, much like the very dead-center of Purgatory.
Atop the bed, held fast in the paralyzing grip of a waking nightmare, thirty-year-old Seung-hwa was suddenly beset by his ten-year-old sister, Yeong-ae, who appeared from nowhere to straddle his chest. The child’s eyes were completely drained of life, brimming instead with the toxic venom of resentment, and her frail hands choked her brother's throat with crushing force. Seung-hwa was entirely unable to offer any resistance to those small, youthful hands. Trapped within a colossal sense of confinement, his face contorted with extreme agony and self-reproach.
"It’s all because of you, Brother..."
Young Yeong-ae’s cold lips parted.
"If you had just kept your promise, I wouldn't have turned out like this. Why did you leave me behind? Why?!"
Over young Yeong-ae’s face, mottled with resentment, another face began to instantly superimpose like a cruel overlap technique. It was the visage of the stepfather, complete with bloodshot eyes, a vile sneer, and a sadistic pleasure. The demon in human guise swallowed Yeong-ae’s face whole, tightening its grip on Seung-hwa’s neck even harder. It was a suffocating moment of absolute, inescapable despair.
4. The Night of the Deepest Void (Present, Dawn)
"Gasp!"
Seung-hwa snapped his eyes open, bursting through the pitch-black darkness.
His heart thrashed violently as if about to explode, and his entire body was drenched in cold sweat, looking as though he had just been dragged out from the depths of a freezing river. Gasping for air, he flailed his hands blindly into the empty space before finally managing to sit up on the bed. He cradled his head in his trembling hands, but the stepfather’s vile laughter from his dream still echoed in his ears like tinnitus.
"Even now, those events from that time turn into nightmares to hack away at me. When will I ever escape this hell and get a peaceful night's sleep...?"
Seung-hwa murmured softly into the dry silence. To exact his revenge, he had willingly taken the hand of a demon and become a killer, but in return, his soul burned away every night in the fires of his past.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he steadied his ragged breathing and pulled out a faded, small, battered box from deep within the space beneath the bed. Opening the box with careful precision, a solitary photograph, preserved with pristine clarity amidst the dusty passage of time, and a pair of flawlessly clean, beautiful white women's shoes revealed themselves.
In the photograph from fifteen years ago stood young Yeong-ae, still untouched by the filth of the world, and beside her stood a boyish Seung-hwa, flashing the brightest, albeit rugged, smile in the world. It was the only innocence he possessed, the proof of a promise he had to protect even in death.
Just then, awakened by the subtle commotion, Yu-bin approached silently through the darkness. She did not attempt to comfort his trembling shoulders with half-baked words. Instead, she gently wrapped her arms around his broad, lonely back from behind, unreservedly sharing her body heat.
In this cold world of demons, it was the only warmth permitted to him. Held in Yu-bin’s warm embrace, Seung-hwa’s eyes welled with red, and soon, two hot streaks of tears flowed silently down his cheeks.
5. The Rusted Railway (Present, Sunset)
It was an evening where the twilight, stained the color of blood, blazed so crimson that it threatened to obliterate the very boundary between heaven and earth. Along a rusted, desolately stretching railway, a woman was moving with perilous steps. Viewed from afar, her silhouette looked like a fragile candle flame exposed to a violent gale.
It was twenty-five-year-old Yeong-ae. As if she no longer possessed the strength to take another step, she collapsed abruptly right in the dead-center of the tracks. The touch of her rough fingertips quietly caressing the cold, metallic rail was beyond sorrowful—it was agonizing. Perhaps it was because the memory of her youthful waiting had resurfaced, back when she believed that at the end of this railway, her brother would one day be standing to rescue her.
"...Brother."
Her voice, scattering into the wind, was so heartbreakingly pitiful that it seemed on the verge of shattering transparently into the empty air.
Yet, her solitary grief could not belong entirely to her. A short distance away from the tracks where Yeong-ae sat huddled, amidst the long, stretched shadows of the twilight, stood two men clad in black suits. They were the watchmen deployed in a tight perimeter by the Old Fox.
With heartless glares akin to hyenas eyeing their prey, they mutely monitored her every single move. The crimson glow of the sunset bled long and deep down the tracks like pooling blood, and the massive trap of darkness closing in on Yeong-ae had already burrowed deep beneath her very feet.
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