Seoho looked at the owner of the crying voice that had kept him awake during his sleepless time. Surprisingly, unlike the crying that sounded so sorrowful it was almost eerie, the man’s appearance gave off an incredibly bright impression.
Golden hair that shone brilliantly as if melted from gold itself, curling beautifully, and between those curls, bright blue eyes could be seen.
The tears that filled those eyes overflowed and streamed down his white cheeks. His gaze naturally went to the reddened eye area from crying too much and the flushed cheeks that seemed heated.
Despite having tears pooling in his eyes, the man stubbornly stared at him without blinking even once, his gaze piercing through.
Despite that obsessive gaze, perhaps the reason Seoho didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable was because of the man’s beautiful appearance? Or was it because of the tears that, unlike the previous crying, were filled with joy?
Then, breaking the long silence, the man opened his mouth.
“Finally….”
A very small sound that barely escaped as if scraping his throat. Unable to hear the man’s voice well, Seoho hesitated and took a step forward.
The man clutched his throat as if it hurt and frowned, but still couldn’t take his eyes off him.
At the pain that briefly flashed across that beautiful face, Seoho unconsciously asked.
“Um, are you alright?”
Then the man lowered his eyebrows and made a deeply pitiful expression. He reached out his hand toward Seoho.
It was a hand he had thought was pretty even earlier. Large and somewhat rough-looking hands.
Following that hand upward, there were solid-looking forearms and broad shoulders. The thin white cloth the man wore couldn’t perfectly cover its owner’s body.
A firm physique that could be felt even beyond the cloth, and a beautiful face.
Even when seeing him through the wall, he had thought he was more than sufficiently beautiful—overflowingly so—but this person actually moving before his eyes looked unrealistically gorgeous.
‘How can a person look like that?’
Regardless of gender, anyone who saw that man’s face would have no choice but to think he was beautiful.
So it wasn’t that strange that he, enchanted by that appearance, had been led here by this person of unknown identity.
‘Probably, right?’
Because people are naturally drawn to beautiful things.
When Seoho slowly grasped his hand, a radiant smile bloomed on that sorrowful face. His eyes smiled prettily as the corners of his mouth curled up beautifully.
As he was blankly admiring that appearance, the man pulled Seoho and embraced him tightly.
It was a sudden embrace. The face that had been dizzying his mind disappeared, and as he was held in a hot yet large embrace, he came to his senses.
‘This isn’t the time to be admiring his face….’
As Seoho hesitated and tried to escape from his embrace, the man let out a small laugh and whispered in Seoho’s ear.
“Caught you.”
Not the sweet voice one would imagine from that beautiful face, but a rough voice filled with hunger—goosebumps rose all over his body. Seoho’s body froze stiff, and he remained held in the man’s embrace for quite a while like that.
**Chapter 1. Eye**
The beginning started with a bizarre crying sound.
The night he suddenly woke up, sleep instantly fled at that spine-chilling sound lingering around his ears.
Was it vomiting out sorrow? Was it speaking of unbearable pain? Or was it simply expressing anger?
Seoho wanted to turn his body and confirm the owner of that crying, but like being paralyzed by sleep paralysis, his body wouldn’t move at all.
Clearly something was looking at him. No, it was letting crying sounds flow into his ear. He rolled his eyes and glanced sideways toward the direction the crying sound came from, but nothing existed there.
‘What is it?’
Clearly the sound was being heard from very close by, yet he couldn’t feel any sign of a person.
The sound continued. But when the substance of the sound couldn’t be seen, strangely the fear disappeared. Like that, the crying sound of unknown identity lingered around Seoho’s ears for quite a while.
Even Seoho didn’t know until when that crying sound continued. The sleep demon that had disappeared in fear quickly overtook him the moment he forgot his fear.
The next day, Seoho opened his eyes to the sunlight pouring down from the window above his head and raised his upper body as if nothing had happened.
‘Didn’t something definitely happen last night?’
With a face not fully awake, he blinked blankly while touching his face that had grown hot from the sunlight, then turned his head at his strangely stinging cheek and rubbed his eyes hard. But no matter how much he rubbed his eyes, nothing changed. Seoho felt himself fully wake up as he approached the wall.
“…What is this?”
Where he had felt the gaze, there was a wall. The wall the bed was attached to.
And on that wall, there was definitely an eye drawn that hadn’t been there until he fell asleep the night before. Two lines and a sphere drawn between them.
It was a terrible drawing, crooked as if drawn by a young child. The problem was that there were no young children in Seoho’s house who would draw such a picture.
* * *
Seoho’s eyes widened.
Again. Again, crying sounds had been heard throughout the dawn and his body wouldn’t move. After listening to the sound for a while like that, exhausted by fatigue, he fell asleep.
And morning came again, and Seoho blinked his eyes while looking at the ceiling.
When the same thing repeated, and that became three times and then four times—today. His body, devoured by fatigue from not sleeping properly, gnawed away at his reason.
Seoho irritably kicked at the eye drawn on the wall.
“Ah.”
When a loud sound was heard, while feeling refreshed inside, worry crept up at the same time. It was because the sound had been too loud.
Seoho carefully raised his body and touched the wall he had kicked. As he carefully examined the wall to see if there were any cracks, Seoho suddenly felt a sense of dissonance.
“The drawing…”
The lines that had seemed clumsily drawn by a young child, bumpy and crooked as if drawn with crayons, had become clean.
Once he became aware of it, something else caught his eye. The two separated straight lines had connected to form the inner corner of the eye.
The moment he noticed that fact, goosebumps rose all over his body.
“What really is this?”
Thump.
His heart made a loud sound. Finally, Seoho could no longer avoid the fact that something strange was happening to him.
Even when a drawing appeared on the wall overnight, even when a crying sound of unknown identity kept being heard for several days, he stubbornly told himself it was nothing. But at this point, he could no longer ignore it. Something supernatural was really happening to him.
Seoho sprang up from the bed and left the room. As soon as he left the room, the entrance and bathroom were visible, and passing through the corridor to the living room, the kitchen, master bedroom, and the study room Seoho had been using appeared.
As he surveyed the familiar space with his eyes, his rapidly beating heart regained stability.
‘This is my home.’
The house where he and his parents had lived from birth until now at twenty years old. The reason he desperately ignored it even though supernatural phenomena were occurring.
This house was the only place his parents had left behind.
On New Year’s Day when Seoho turned twenty, his parents said their son was all grown up so now they were free, told him to spend the New Year with his friends, and went to see the sunrise only to pass away in a traffic accident—this was the house they left behind and a place full of memories with his parents.
It had only been three months since he started living alone, so the fact that his parents were gone didn’t feel quite real yet, but he had been relieved that at least tears didn’t just flow like before.
He had resolved to take a leave of absence for about a year, but was having hopeful thoughts that maybe he could return to school from next semester at this rate. But how on earth was he supposed to accept this supernatural phenomenon that suddenly occurred in the midst of all this?
‘Is it really a ghost?’
Perhaps his body might not be well.
‘Did I develop sleepwalking?’
All sorts of thoughts occurred to him. Sitting quietly on the sofa organizing his thoughts, Seoho soon stood up as if he had made a decision and headed to the kitchen.
He took out cereal, put it in a bowl, poured it full of milk, and combatively shoved the cereal into his mouth. Whatever was happening to him now, he would overcome this well.
‘Yeah, I can do it.’
If the house was haunted by a ghost, he could just call a shaman, and if there was a problem with him, he could go to the hospital. Whatever it was, Seoho had absolutely no intention of leaving this house and couldn’t leave.
So to overcome this ordeal, first he needed to build up his strength. Seoho soaked the empty bowl in the sink and fell into thought again.
“If it’s a ghost…”
If it was a ghost, he was curious about what that ghost’s identity might be.
“Mom and Dad?”
Did his parents also accumulate resentment from their sudden death? Or were they concerned about leaving their barely-adult son alone? Or maybe they thought they were free now but were wronged to have passed away like that.
But the crying sound was from one person, not two people.
“Did Dad cry like that?”
It was a sorrowful crying sound that seemed to vomit everything out, saying look at me, notice that I’m crying right now, telling him to recognize it.
No matter how much he thought about it, it didn’t seem like his father’s crying sound after all. Seoho tried to recall memories of his father crying.
“Have I ever seen Dad cry…? No.”
He felt deflated. Now that he thought about it, he really had never seen his father or mother crying.
“Then it could be Mom’s crying sound. Mom’s voice could get thick when she cries.”
While escaping reality with nonsensical thoughts, Seoho soon shook his head.
“Should I go to the hospital? Or a shaman?”
It seemed better to visit a shaman than a hospital. Wasn’t it better to think the house was haunted by a ghost rather than thinking he had gone crazy? Actually, in Seoho’s current situation, both being crazy or being haunted by a ghost would look like terribly bad luck to others.
