They both turned toward the sound together, though neither moved, and for a few long seconds the attic seemed to lean with them, as if the whole house, timbers and nails with ghost-thin beams, had held its breath in collective anticipation.
The noise had come from somewhere below, not a creak or groan, but a deliberate clatter, sharp, sudden, too precise to be wind, too heavy to be a settling board.
It weighed intention.
And in that moment, the dim warmth of the candle between them no longer felt like safety, but a fragile, flickering veil between here and something watching.
Their eyes met then, not with panic, but with the kind of stiff, shared recognition that passes between people who know they've heard the same thing but don't want to name it yet.
Taejun's lips parted first, the boy's voice cutting into the quiet like a thread drawn slowly across fabric, not rushed or frightened, just wondering, chilled.
"Maybe it was… him this time?" he asked, his brow furrowed, gaze locked on the stairs leading down into the dark. "Don't you think so too, ahjusshi?"
Hyeonjae didn't answer right away. His breath caught in the quiet, and his head tilted slightly, not toward Taejun, but toward the space beyond the candle's reach, as if he were listening for something the boy couldn't yet hear.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and carefully paced, each syllable weighed like a footstep in an unfamiliar hallway. "Maybe," he murmured, "but that would mean… he knows we're here."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
The shadows along the attic walls seemed to draw closer, not with menace but with gravity, as if memory itself had taken on form and was now folding the room inward like a slow breath.
Then came a sound, so soft it might've been imagined, but it scraped gently along the floorboards below them like the hem of something old dragging behind its wearer.
Hyeonjae blinked at the moving panel, then offered a crooked, almost sheepish smile.
"Maybe… maybe it was just the wind, right, Taejun?" he said, voice a little too light, a little too fast, as if the words were meant to fill a space he didn't want to name.
He gave a soft, nervous laugh, barely more than a puff of air, then scratched the back of his neck like a boy pretending not to be afraid.
Taejun's eyes widened, not in fear, but in cold, alert curiosity.
He turned toward Hyeonjae again, voice steadier than it should have been. "What wind," he asked, "makes a sound like that?"
Hyeonjae gave a forced smile, one side of his mouth twitching like a curtain trying to pretend the window wasn't open.
"You're a little too smart for your age," he muttered, not unkindly, though there was something brittle behind it. "Gotta stop making me look like the scared one."
Taejun didn't return the smile.
His gaze remained suspicious, not of the man beside him but of the man's refusal to meet the dark honestly.
Hyeonjae rubbed his hands together slowly, not to warm them, but to give them something to do.
"Alright, alright," he said with a breath that didn't fully settle in his lungs. "Ignore it for now. Maybe it's nothing. These houses… they like to make you listen. Perhaps, it's the trick of the walls."
Taejun watched him a second longer before nodding slowly and folding his legs back beneath him, nestling into the same spot as before.
The candle flame swayed ever so slightly, as if it too had shifted its posture to listen.
Hyeonjae leaned forward, his eyes unfocused now, not from fear but from memory, long, winding memory, like a corridor he hadn't walked in years but still knew how to navigate in the dark.
The shadows played along his cheeks as he spoke, lending his words a weight that didn't sound like a story anymore.
"One night," he said softly, as if afraid to speak too loud and wake something sleeping beneath them, "I came home from school and the door was already unlocked. But it's not wide open. It just cracked as if someone knew the exact moment I'd return and wanted me to believe it had always been that way. The air inside wasn't cold. It was warm. And it's not just warm, it's welcoming me. A fire was already lit in the hearth. A tea was laid out on the table. It is not brewed, nor is it steaming. But it was waiting like whoever, or whatever, was inside didn't want to frighten me. Like it just wanted to say… 'thank you.'"
His voice drifted lower, more distant, and Taejun leaned forward instinctively, drawn by the unraveling of something old and tightly wound.
"It felt like the house had finally learned how to care back. All that time I spent talking to it, checking every room before I went to bed, whispering 'good night' into the corners where the shadows pooled thickest… maybe it had listened. Maybe it had started to miss me, too."
There was a long pause.
The flame wavered as if the room had inhaled.
And then Hyeonjae's voice returned, but this time, it came strained, quieter than before, like something heavy had sat down on his chest.
"But it was only a few days later," he continued, eyes now fixed on the floor, "that I found out the truth. Or part of it, anyway. The house we'd moved into— the one I thought was my grandfather's old home? It had burned down ten years before we ever arrived. The fire had taken everything. There was nothing left but cinders and overgrown weeds. I found the newspaper clippings. Photos. The place had been condemned."
Taejun's mouth opened slowly, but no sound came.
"There was no family home," Hyeonjae whispered, barely audible now, like he was confessing to something he wasn't ready to believe. "No countryside. No address on file. No records. No land deed. And my mother…"
He swallowed, his next words came like broken glass pressed carefully into place.
"My mother died when I was a baby."
The candle's flame stilled.
The attic no longer felt like it was breathing with them.
And somewhere far below, buried beneath layers of wood and dust and time itself, a sound stirred once more.
So faint it barely reached the attic air.
So subtle it could have been mistaken for imagination, for the groan of timber shifting under the night.
But it wasn't, it came again, a dull, dragging scuff, like something heavy being pulled across the floor with slow, aching effort.
Not the creaks of an old house settling into itself. No.
This was purposeful.
The kind of sound that knew it was being heard.
The kind of sound that waited between each movement, listening back.
The air in the attic turned cold, not in a gust or draft, not the way cold normally arrives, but with a gradual stillness, like something had slipped in under the door on its belly and spread out across the floor, unnoticed, until the warmth forgot how to stay.
Taejun blinked once, slowly, as though trying to clear something from his eyes.
"Wait… what?" he asked, the word barely finished before his breath curled visibly in the light.
And beside him, Hyeonjae smiled.
It wasn't the kind of smile that came with comfort or mischief or melancholy.
It didn't ask to be understood or forgiven.
It just existed, cold, still, like a mask that had long ago forgotten the face it was made for.
"That's what the story says, anyway," he murmured, and the way he said it felt less like a conclusion and more like a curse, a phrase that had circled too many tongues before reaching his.
Taejun turned fully toward him now, a knot pulling taut in his gut. "You mean… It's not true?"
Hyeonjae gave a soft, contented noise deep in his throat as he leaned back, stretching his legs out across the attic floor with the slow, heavy grace of someone settling into a room that didn't quite belong to them.
The floorboards groaned beneath him, not just from his weight, but as if something beneath the floor was shifting in response.
"Not all stories are meant to be facts," he said, resting his hands loosely on his stomach. "Some are just coats you try on for the night. You wear them around someone to see if they notice how the sleeves hang, if the smell reminds them of something old they can't name. You don't always know who it belongs to until it keeps the wind out better than your skin."
Taejun frowned.
There was something in his chest, tight, warm, uncertain. "So… you made it up?"
Hyeonjae didn't look at him.
His head rolled to the side like he was already drifting elsewhere, his voice rising in a light, careless hum. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I borrowed it. I found it tucked under the floorboards with a nest of old photographs and broken jewelry. Or maybe it's someone else's dream that's been sleeping in me too long. I get sentimental in attics, and it must be the insulation. Something about it makes the past sound better with each retelling."
"That's not funny," Taejun said, and his voice had lost that earlier softness.
There was an edge to it now, not anger, but a child's quiet refusal to be made a fool of, especially by someone who seemed to know the weight of every word he dropped.
"No," Hyeonjae agreed easily, his gaze finally drifting toward the candle again, the flame wobbling like it, too, had caught the lie. "But it's true."
Taejun didn't respond right away.
He sat very still, watching the man beside him as though he were trying to puzzle out which parts of him were real and which parts had been stitched together from some old, lonely memory, trying to play dress-up.
The story, the house, the mother, his mother, the tea waiting by the fire, it had felt real.
Real like the smell of burnt sugar, like a voice on a tape that cuts out mid-laugh.
He hadn't doubted it, not entirely.
And now, knowing it might not be true didn't make it any less felt.
He swallowed. "Why would you tell me something like that?" he asked at last.
And this time, Hyeonjae didn't answer right away.
His expression didn't shift, but something behind it did, like a curtain fluttering just far enough to hint at a window you didn't know was there.
When he spoke again, his tone had changed, as if a hand reaching out through fog, not to frighten, but not to comfort either.
"Because even fake stories," he said, "can tell the truth about someone."
He turned, and his eyes met Taejun's fully for the first time in several minutes.
In that look was something too old to belong entirely to him.
"And I wanted to see," he continued, "if you'd recognize any of it."
The candlelight shifted again, and for a moment, neither of them looked like they were sitting in the present at all.
Just two figures in a borrowed attic, in a house that might've never been built, wearing someone else's memories like coats too long in the arms.
Outside, something moved softly down the hallway.
Then stopped.
Then Hyeonjae looked at Taejun again, and something shifted, subtle, almost imperceptible.
That strange warmth returned to his voice, curling around his words like breath fogging on glass.
"Besides, ahjusshi's gotta earn his keep somehow," he said, with a half-grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "If I'm not telling stories, what am I good for?"
Taejun almost smiled, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, unsure if it belonged to now or to some other, safer moment, but it didn't last long, it flickered like the candle between them, stubborn and small.
Outside, the wind moaned low through the eaves, threading its way around the bones of the house with the care of something old and blind, low and steady, like a song hummed by someone who had long since forgotten the words.
It was impossible to tell whether the house was listening… or laughing.
Or maybe both.
The candle had burned lower now, its flame crouched in a cradle of molten wax, the base shimmering with shadow like a pool too shallow to hold water, yet too deep to see the bottom.
Every time the flame flickered, the attic seemed to breathe, walls swelling and shrinking with the memory of things left unsaid.
Taejun leaned back, careful not to knock over the candle or the delicate silence between them.
He felt something strange crawling up his ribs, not fear exactly, but a pressure behind the heart, like a memory that hadn't quite formed yet.
The kind of emotion that arrived without a name, only weight.
Hyeonjae's story lingered in his mind like the scent of something that had once been burning, not visible, not immediate, but present in a way that clung to the inside of the lungs.
He didn't understand why it unsettled him more as a lie than it would have as truth.
Maybe it was because it had brushed too close to something real.
The ache of a house that remembers.
The quiet shame of needing walls to be witnesses.
The softness of a voice that came from nowhere and stayed longer than it should have.
Maybe, in the quiet folds of that attic, Taejun recognized his own shadow standing somewhere just behind Hyeonjae's words.
Across from him, the man had gone quiet, his gaze still fixed on the candle's dim glow.
He wasn't smiling anymore, he wasn't performing.
There was a stillness to him now, not tense, as though the story he'd told had stirred something he hadn't meant to touch, as though he, too, was hearing something neither of them had spoken out loud.
And in that silence, the house creaked again, but differently this time, not the complaint of old wood or weathered beams, but something softer, like a breath drawn just behind the attic door.
Taejun turned slightly, eyes flicking toward the shadows.
The candle hissed, and for a heartbeat, it looked like the flame tried to retreat.
Hyeonjae didn't move, but his voice, when it came, was no longer casual; it was low. Gentle, almost fatherly.
"Don't open that door just yet."
Taejun looked at him.
Hyeonjae's eyes were still on the flame.
"There are stories," he murmured, "that prefer not to be seen walking around. They're quieter when you pretend not to notice them."
And for the first time that night, Taejun realized they weren't alone in the attic.
The attic seemed to press in around them, not with menace, but with the oppressive softness of something listening too closely.
The walls exhaled again, slow and damp, as if sighing through layers of rot and memory.
Taejun's fingers curled against the floorboards, which no longer felt like wood but older, heavier, soaked through with stories that had never made it into books.
And yet it was that sentence, that simple sentence, that held him by the throat.
A place that notices people who are about to be forgotten.
He didn't answer right away.
The words turned inward like blades, not cutting, but reminding, reminding him of all the moments he had tried to make himself small enough not to be a burden.
The times he'd waited for someone to ask how he was and watched the question dissolve before it reached their lips.
Forgotten didn't mean dead.
It meant being passed over in the room you were standing in.
It meant speaking and hearing only your echo.
It meant being there... but fading.
He looked back at Hyeonjae, who still watched him, not with pity, not even with concern, but with a quiet that understood too well, like someone who'd also once heard the house open, and had chosen not to leave.
The candle's flame guttered suddenly, and for a moment it looked like it split, twin flames flickering atop the wick before collapsing into one again.
The mirror across the room, dusty and dark, caught none of it.
Taejun swallowed. "Then… what does it want from me?"
Hyeonjae didn't blink. "Nothing it won't give back."
That didn't help.
It made his skin crawl, a sentence that wrapped around your thoughts and didn't let go.
He glanced toward the attic door.
And yet, it felt closer than it had been before.
"I didn't come here to be part of something," he said suddenly, louder than he intended. "I just needed a place to sit and spend time with someone."
"And it gave you that," Hyeonjae said. "That's all it ever does. Until you start to ask questions."
Taejun narrowed his eyes. "You wanted me to ask."
The older man tilted his head, and for the first time in their conversation, something flickered beneath his features, something distant and tired. "I just wanted you to hear the answer."
The candle flared again, and this time, Taejun saw it: a shape, not reflected, but forming in the pool of wax at its base.
At first it looked like a ripple, then a fingerprint, like something pressing up from beneath, as if the base of the candle were only a window into something else.
He jerked back slightly. "What is that?"
Hyeonjae looked down. He saw and nodded.
"It's listening. It always listens when someone gets close to remembering."
"Remembering what?"
But Hyeonjae didn't answer.
He stood instead, slow and careful, joints creaking just like the attic beams above.
The candle between them wavered again, casting tall, trembling shadows that stretched in impossible directions.
"Let me show you something," he said, and extended a hand.
Taejun hesitated.
Every nerve in his body screamed not to move, but curiosity had always been louder than fear, and in this house, that was a dangerous thing.
He took the hand.
The attic door opened before they touched it.
And the air on the other side was colder than memory.
The candle flickered once, and for the briefest moment, so fleeting he questioned his senses, Taejun thought he saw the outline of a child in the rocking chair, knees curled to chest, head tilted just slightly too far, watching them with an unnatural stillness that didn't belong to anything living.
The image was gone the moment he blinked, as though the shadows had merely twisted into a cruel shape by accident, but the chill it left beneath his skin lingered like a bruise.
His voice came out softer than he intended, half swallowed by the heaviness in the room. "Is that why you're here?"
There was a pause, a silence too delicate to break by accident, before Hyeonjae gave a quiet, breath-thin laugh.
But there was no cheer in it, it sounded like something buckled and old, like laughter forced through a mouth that had once forgotten how, like grief trying on a mask.
"I think," he said finally, his tone measured like someone walking across ice they knew too well, "I've always been here."
Taejun stiffened, the words sinking in like slow poison. His gaze sharpened. "What does that mean?"
But Hyeonjae only gave a thin smile, his head tilting with that same strange grace, like a question asked sideways. A smile not meant to soothe, but to delay.
"It means you asked a good question," he murmured. "But maybe the answer isn't ready yet."
Taejun bristled. "That's not an answer."
"No," Hyeonjae said, "perhaps it was a warning."
Before Taejun could respond, the candle between them gave a sudden, unnatural sputter.
Not the kind caused by breath or wind.
No shift in the air, no creaking of boards or whisper of movement.
It simply faltered, light withdrawing like a startled animal, and let out a soft, wet hiss.
A slow, deliberate sound, almost intimate.
Smoke curled upward, forming a tight spiral that twisted once, then collapsed, vanishing as if pulled back into the wick.
The light vanished with it.
The attic dimmed, a thick, syrupy darkness pooling in the corners, turning familiar shapes into watching silhouettes.
And in that dimness, Taejun heard something.
Not with his ears, those remained filled with silence, but in his chest, behind the ribs.
In the soft place just above the heart.
A low hum.
It felt like the house had drawn breath.
Not just air through cracked beams, but a true inhalation, as if it had been holding its lungs closed all this time, and finally opened them because it wanted to smell, to taste what had come inside.