Taejun swallowed hard. His heart lurching like a compass needle forced to realign.
There was no certainty in Hyeonjae's voice, no assurance that what lay ahead would be safe or manageable or kind.
And that, more than anything, terrified and anchored him.
Taejun nodded slowly, his fingers curling into fists at his sides, not out of defiance, but readiness.
For whatever thread had drawn him into that house, into that otherworld of grief and memory and Jihoon's silent scream, hadn't been cut.
It had simply changed direction.
So together, the two of them turned away from the house that still watched them with blind windows and a heartbeat buried deep in the floorboards.
They walked down the alley, side by side, as two names tangled by time and blood and stories too broken to tell aloud.
The wind pressed against their backs as if urging them forward, and somewhere, beyond the horizon where the city gave way to hills and forgotten things, the next chapter of this cursed inheritance waited in the dark, teeth bared, heart beating.
And this time, Taejun would not go alone.
The air inside the house bore that unbearable, suffocating silence that seemed to hum just below the human threshold of hearing, as if the house itself were holding its breath, waiting.
Gold light bled through the fractured windows, stretching into thin, trembling shafts that barely cut through the interior gloom.
Dust hovered in the air like ash suspended in time, drifting in patterns too deliberate to be random.
The broken doorway framed them both in that stillness, casting long shadows across the warped floorboards like the stretched limbs of something long dead, brittle to rise again but too hateful to rest.
Everything smelled of age and rot and a kind of memory that didn't just cling to surfaces but burrowed into the marrow of the house.
Hyeonjae stood with his arms folded, his back pressed lightly against the cracked wall that had once held photographs, now long torn down or blackened into illegibility by smoke or time or grief.
His coat was open, catching the faint breeze that leaked through the gaps in the boards.
His eyes, dark and unreadable, didn't meet Taejun's right away.
They hovered, instead, just to the left, as if staring too directly at the boy might ignite something neither of them could extinguish.
His posture was rigid but not tense, still and waiting, like a soldier in a place he'd sworn never to return to but always knew he would.
Taejun stood several paces away, school uniform still on, creased from the day's movement, the collar slightly damp from sweat where it met the nape of his neck.
His fists were clenched, trembling, not just from fear or anger but something else: the furious ache of knowing too much and too little all at once.
He looked smaller here, swallowed by the ribs of the house, but the fire behind his eyes had grown.
In this hollow, forgotten place where walls whispered names and the floor groaned with stories that no longer belonged to the living, he stood anyway.
Taejun stepped forward slowly, each footfall pressing dust into the cracks like sealing a promise.
He didn't speak at first, but the question hung between them, heavy as lead.
"You told me not to come back," he finally said, voice tight and raw, every word shaped by fatigue.
Hyeonjae didn't flinch. "And yet, here you are." His voice came low, hard, like stone dragging against metal. "You nearly lost the last time. You don't learn, do you? This place doesn't care about your reasons. It gives you what you want, so it can take what it needs."
Taejun's shoulders trembled. "You think I don't know that now? I know what it did. I saw him. I heard him. And... Jihoon. He's alive. He's not just a vision or a trick. He was there, and he was hurting because of the house where you abandoned him!"
"And you think coming back here will fix that?" Hyeonjae's voice cracked, sharp as broken glass. "This house doesn't fix things, or your childish problems. It feeds off you and your guilt, your grief, your needs. It gave you a door when you got in."
Taejun's fists clenched tighter, his voice cracking as tears began to burn in his eyes. "He's my brother! And yet you knew. You always knew, and you didn't tell me. Why?! Why would you let me forget him?"
Hyeonjae turned away, as though unable to meet that look. His voice dropped, trembling at the edges. "Because remembering him would break you. Because losing him nearly broke me, too. Not just you..."
There was a beat of silence. The wind whispered through a shattered windowpane.
Somewhere in the walls, something old creaked like a breath being held just a moment longer.
Taejun took another step forward, voice shaking but stronger now. "You saved me, but not him."
Hyeonjae flinched, as though the words struck bone.
His jaw worked, his breath caught in his throat. "Because I couldn't," he said, barely above a whisper. "Because this place doesn't offer salvation, it offers ultimatums. Either one twin or none. And I chose who will breathe."
Taejun's face twisted. His lips parted as though he meant to speak, but nothing came.
His voice finally fell like a stone. "So he died… because of you... No, it was all my fault to be birth along with him..."
"No," Hyeonjae said, taking a step toward him now, his voice firmer but broken beneath its weight.
"He died because we left him. No, I left him. Because your parents shut that door and sealed him away, and by the time I found the truth, he was already fading. But you, Taejun, you're the only one who can still reach him. And that's why the house shows him to you. It's not out of mercy. It's because you're still haunted enough to hear him. And if you keep coming back, it's going to take you too. Maybe next time… I won't be able to pull you out."
Taejun's breath hitched, but his stare never wavered. "Then don't pull me out," he said. "I don't ask you to. For now, I need you to teach me how to walk through it. Teach me how to survive it."
Hyeonjae froze, stunned by the clarity in the boy's voice, the weight behind those words.
"If I can't leave him behind," Taejun continued, quieter now, but certain, "then I need to learn how to find him without losing myself. The house doesn't have the power to control my life and Jihoon's."
The silence followed.
Hyeonjae looked at him, and something softened, cracked inside his guarded eyes. "You're just a kid," he murmured.
Taejun nodded, eyes burning with something too fierce to belong to a child. "Then turn me into something else. Maybe an adult like you, so I can fight the evil the next time we meet."
The sun hovered just above the horizon, bleeding its last embers across the sky like a wound refusing to close.
The clouds ignited in deep, searing streaks of orange and crimson, casting the entire world beneath them in a feverish, haunted glow.
Out beyond the edge of the overgrown trail, the house loomed at the edge of the woods, a slumped relic of something forgotten, left to rot.
The broken fence that once dared to keep intruders away now curled like a dying hand, while brittle weeds clawed up through the cracked earth, rising in clusters around warped stepping stones buried half in dust, half in memory.
The porch, skeletal and sagging, jutted out like a crooked jawbone.
Every board groaned under the weight of history. Every shadow held a shape that dared you to blink.
Taejun stood there, right at the base of that fractured entrance, his breath shallow and uneven.
His shoulders rose and fell beneath the faded blue of his school uniform, and though his limbs trembled from more than just exhaustion, he did not move back.
His shoes, still scuffed from playground gravel, hovered just above the first plank of wood, hesitating.
A hunger for the truth that no adult had ever handed him.
Behind him, a windless silence clung to the path they had walked, yet it was not quiet.
Hyeonjae stood a pace behind, arms folded tightly, the veins in his neck rigid.
His coat flapped faintly in the dry breath of twilight, though no wind stirred the trees.
His jaw was locked so tightly it looked as though his own words might choke him.
For a moment, neither spoke. The air between them bristled with something brittle, like a string stretched too far, one pull from breaking.
"You're not listening to me now," Hyeonjae said, voice stiff with control, like he was gripping it by the throat. "You don't belong here, kid. Stop acting cool and accept this harsh truth. You are the chosen one to live. Let the past be the past."
Taejun turned, and the gold of the sunset struck his face like a mask half-cracked, painting his expression in fire. "Then where do I belong?" His voice came hoarse, every syllable scraped against the inside of his throat. "At home, with a family who erased my brother like he never existed? At school, where I sit beside kids who talk about cartoons and recess while I wonder why I wake up screaming without knowing who I'm screaming for?!"
Hyeonjae's nostrils flared. "You think stomping into this cursed house is going to fix that?"
Taejun's hands balled into fists at his sides. He shook his head, but not in denial, like he was shaking loose the last piece of restraint. "It's the only place that told me the truth," he hissed. "Everyone else lied. Even my closer family, my Hyung, and... even you lied to me. Although I don't have the memory I ever meeting you. But still..."
"If you must know... I lied to protect you." Hyeonjae's voice cracked like a thunderclap.
His foot came down hard on the gravel, and for a second it seemed like the whole world jolted with him. "You're just a seven-year-old kid. You think this is some kind of story you were told before sleeping? Some fantasy adventure where the hero saves the day? That ghost, or maybe your brother, isn't some shimmering memory trapped in glass. He's been swallowed by this place not long ago. He has bound it. This house is hungry, Taejun. It devours people's pain, and drinks their grief like wine. If you step inside with the wrong question, it'll rewrite the answer into your bones."
"I'm not 'just' anything," Taejun said, voice rising to a scream that cracked at the edges, trembling and bleeding. "I'm Jihoon's twin. If he's in there, then I have to go back. No one else ever did. Not even you. The so-called babysitter. Not even them. So now, it has to be me. All he has is me, and all I have is him. I can't lose him anymore after I let him into that house. Not again."
The words settled in the air like ash. Hyeonjae didn't respond. His fists remained at his sides, his mouth set in a line that looked carved rather than formed.
The sunset deepened into red-violet, shadows pooling thicker around the porch, as though the house itself was leaning forward to listen.
After a long, breathless pause, Hyeonjae finally spoke, but quietly, bitterly, more ghost than man. "You're just like him."
Taejun blinked. The fire behind his eyes faltered, only for a heartbeat. "What?"
"Both of you," Hyeonjae murmured. "Too stubborn to let go. You're too kind, even when something is going to kill you."
He knelt slowly, the leather of his coat whispering against his knees, and came eye-level with the boy.
The sun cast a crimson edge across Hyeonjae's cheekbone, drawing shadows down the side of his face until he looked hollowed out, as if even time had worn him thin.
"I don't agree with this," he said, and for the first time, there was no fury in his voice, only fatigue. "I think it's madness. But I've lived in this house long enough to know: if I don't go with you, it'll take you alone. Not all at once. But bit by bit. You'll walk in alone, and it'll carve you down until you forget what you came for. So fine. I'll walk beside you. Just far enough to keep you realizing. Just long enough to drag you out again when it starts pulling."
Taejun swallowed hard, voice softening. "You mean it?"
"Unfortunately," Hyeonjae muttered. He stood up, brushing dust from his knees, and glanced toward the forest behind them. "Let's go. While it still remembers your name. No, it's us."
By the time they made it back to town, the sky had darkened to a bruised shade of violet.
Wisps of clouds curled low along the horizon, catching the last gold light as the sun disappeared beneath the hills.
Streetlamps flickered one by one, casting trembling halos on the pavement.
The path wound through tall grasses that hissed as they brushed against it, and somewhere far off, a train horn groaned like something dying in its sleep.
Taejun walked beside Hyeonjae, dragging the edge of his shoe through gravel in rhythmic arcs.
His breath came slower now, not from calm, but from the long, uncertain weight of understanding, like carrying something fragile in both hands and not knowing how to set it down.
Ahead, lights blinked through the trees like distant stars, bright and unsteady.
As they crested a slope, the view opened wide to reveal the town fairgrounds, lit up with a mismatched chaos of color.
Ferris wheel lights spun against the dusk like a slow-turning eye.
Music drifted faintly on the air: accordion, laughter, the low murmur of crowds. The scent of kettle corn and cheap perfume, and fried batter rode the breeze.
Taejun stared, eyes wide, not with wonder, but with enjoyment. "Is that…?"
Hyeonjae nodded, not bothering to look. "The funfair. They set it up every year before the Harvest Moon. It's always the same booths, the same rides. And some bad decisions we make."
Taejun's gaze didn't move. "Maybe... Jihoon would've liked this."
"He used to talk about it," Hyeonjae said after a long pause. His voice dropped to a murmur. "He always wanted to ride the spinning teacups."
They stopped at the crest of the hill, standing in silence. The breeze tugged at the edge of Taejun's sleeves.
The carousel lights flickered gently below them, casting the painted horses in and out of shadow.
"Do you think he remembers?" Taejun asked, almost to himself.
Hyeonjae didn't answer immediately. His gaze was locked on the fairground, but he wasn't seeing it. "I think… whatever's left of him does."
Taejun turned to look at him, eyes searching the side of Hyeonjae's face. "Then next year, if I'm still here… we'll take him here together. Just us three is fine."
Hyeonjae exhaled hard through his nose. "That's not how it works."
Taejun smiled faintly, more stubborn than joyful. "Then I'll make it work."
Hyeonjae let out a dry, humorless snort and turned back toward the gravel path. "You're too much trouble for one person to handle, you know that?"
"Yeah," Taejun said, still watching the lights. "I think Jihoon was, too."
They walked on, side by side beneath a deepening sky. The fair behind them shimmered in the distance, as if waiting for someone who'd never quite made it home.
"It's been a long time since I let my feet wander there," Hyeonjae muttered, his voice low and musing, eyes fixed on the horizon where the last thread of orange bled into a deep violet sky.
He stretched with exaggerated ease, arms looping behind his head as he strolled forward, his gait loose and deceptively relaxed, like a man pretending he hadn't just been standing at the edge of a haunted memory.
A crooked smile played across his face, wry, touched with nostalgia, but flickering like a candle in the wind.
Taejun eyed him warily, trying to match that nonchalance and failing. "To the house?" he asked, his voice brittle, the word house catching in his throat like a splinter.
Hyeonjae gave a short, dry chuckle, a sound too sharp to be carefree. "No," he said, his eyes tracking the distant glimmer of colored bulbs rising just above the tree line. "Cotton candy, neon lights, overprized rigged games, children shrieking over prizes they'll forget by the next morning. The true horror show of human civilization."
Taejun blinked, thrown by the unexpected answer. "…You mean the funfair?"
"Bingo," Hyeonjae replied, popping the word like a firecracker, the grin on his face widening, but never quite reaching his eyes.
There was a pause as they walked, the gravel crunching beneath their shoes in rhythm with the rising chorus of distant laughter and carousel music.
The scent of fried batter and spun sugar drifted faintly through the warm breeze, wrapping itself around Taejun like the fading comfort of a half-remembered dream.
"You're taking me to the carnival?" Taejun's voice was cautious, slow, as though he half-expected Hyeonjae to pull a knife out of his coat instead.
Hyeonjae gave him a sidelong glance, amused but not mocking. "Don't look at me like I've stuffed a demon under every cotton-candy cart. I'm not luring you into some new haunted sideshow, promise. I just figured we could take the long way back and breathe a little before we dive headfirst into that monster's mouth again. Come on, live a little."
He paused, that smile twitching upward once more, but now it carried something else, maybe even fondness. "Besides," he added, tilting his head toward Taejun with mock offense, "you owe me one, remember? I saved your life, remember? Or did we already forget the part where the walls tried to eat you?"
Taejun let the tension in his shoulders ease, just barely. The corners of his lips lifted, hesitant, unsure whether this detour was real or some veiled lesson or trap.
But in the end, the boy let the smile settle on his face, soft and faint like the first break of dawn through fog.
"…Fine," he said, the word reluctant, but not unwilling.
"Attaboy," Hyeonjae said, and this time, there was real warmth beneath it.
They walked on, father and son, though neither dared to say it aloud, but linked not by years of memory but by the unspoken weight of something far more terrible.
Above them, the sky deepened to indigo, stars flickering into view like secrets daring to be seen.
And ahead, the flickering lights of the carnival danced across the treetops, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Behind them, unseen and unspoken, the house waited still, its door ajar, its hunger simmering, and its walls listening.
But for now, for this fleeting moment, the boy and the man who shared his blood let themselves drift toward something brighter, even if the shadows followed with every step.