Haneul's grip trembled, veins pulsing along his forearms, torn between ending him and the small, broken voice of Taejun trembling behind him.
The tension in Haneul's body reached the edge of collapse, his pulse hammering beneath his skin like a drum summoning the dead.
His fingers dug deeper into Hyeonjae's throat, feeling the hot tremor of blood fighting against the pressure. But in that burning instant, as his grip crushed tighter, Taejun's thin voice rang out once more, fragile, desperate, but louder now, slicing straight into the heart of Haneul's fury like a jagged shard of glass.
"Please… stop…" Taejun sobbed, his face streaked with tears, small frame shivering, his eyes wide with something heavier than fear, confusion, heartbreak, the unbearable weight of seeing two people he barely understood locked in a dance of violence that he felt responsible for but could not escape.
"Don't hurt him… please… I don't want this…" His voice broke under the words, dissolving into quiet, panicked gasps.
The sound shattered through Haneul's rage like cold water across searing embers.
His breath hitched; the vice around Hyeonjae's throat loosened, not out of mercy, but because the sight of Taejun fractured something deeper inside him, the silent part that had carried his failures like stones beneath his ribs for years. His shoulders trembled, not from exhaustion, but from the unbearable collision of rage and guilt, of the brother he had lost and the boy standing before him now.
Hyeonjae felt the shift instantly. His lips peeled back into a ghastly smirk, voice strained but gleeful through the narrowing gap of breath.
"There it is..." he rasped, eyes glittering with malicious triumph. "There's the real you, Haneul. Always breaking when it matters most."
His voice turned into a whisper that dripped into Haneul's ear like venom, intimate and cruel. "You couldn't save Jihoon. And you won't save him either this time."
Haneul's entire frame jolted as if struck. The name landed like a hammer to his chest, forcing him back a step, his balance wavering.
His hand fell from Hyeonjae's throat, trembling, fingers curling into a shaking fist at his side.
The rod slipped from his weakened grasp, clattering onto the floor with a hollow, ringing note that seemed to echo forever between the sagging walls.
Hyeonjae straightened slowly, one hand rubbing at his bruised neck, his chest rising in uneven breaths, but his posture never lost its poise.
His grin widened as he studied the silent collapse of the man before him. "That's right," he murmured, voice soft and poisonous. "You always flinch at the last second."
He turned his head toward Taejun now, eyes narrowing with predatory calm. "But he won't. Not for long. Soon enough, he'll come to me willingly. This... you've planted the seeds yourself."
Taejun stumbled backward as Hyeonjae's gaze settled on him, his little hands rising to shield himself instinctively. "No…" Taejun whispered, his voice breaking again, but softer this time, as though unsure who he was pleading to anymore.
Haneul's lips parted, breath rasping in his throat, but the words failed him.
Every muscle screamed to lunge again, to strike, to break the creature in front of him, but his body resisted, paralyzed by the terror that Hyeonjae might be right.
The silence that followed hung heavy, thick with a dread that pushed against the very marrow of the room.
Then, without warning, Hyeonjae took a step forward, his movements graceful and slow, reaching a pale hand toward Taejun as though offering comfort.
"Come now," he whispered, voice syrup-smooth, poisonous. "Don't be frightened. You've seen enough to know where you belong."
Taejun's breathing quickened, frozen in place, his eyes darting between Hyeonjae's outstretched hand and Haneul's crumbling frame. "I- I want to go home… Hyung..." he whispered helplessly, tears spilling from his chin.
The air grew heavier as Hyeonjae inched closer to the trembling child. His pale hand remained outstretched, fingers slightly curled as if reaching not for comfort, but for possession.
Each step he took sent invisible waves through the atmosphere, a pressure that made Taejun's breathing grow more rapid, his thin chest rising and falling with erratic gasps.
Haneul watched, his eyes wide, muscles tensed, but his legs refused to respond, paralyzed by the twisting knot of dread tightening inside him.
"You don't have to be afraid," Hyeonjae murmured, his voice coated in false tenderness that barely concealed the hunger beneath. "Just sleep for a while. It'll be easier that way."
As he spoke, his other hand dipped subtly into the sleeve of his long coat, withdrawing a fine silver needle, so thin it almost disappeared against the dim light. Its tip gleamed faintly, catching the sickly yellow glow of the decaying chandelier above them.
The liquid coating its point shimmered, dense and viscous, clinging to the steel in sluggish beads.
Taejun took an instinctive step back, but there was nowhere to retreat.
His heel struck a warped floorboard, his balance faltering as his small hands shot out behind him for support.
His whimpers came in broken gasps now, words tangled in his throat. "P-please... I- I don't want—"
"There, there," Hyeonjae cooed softly, his voice now almost melodic, as though humming a lullaby meant to suffocate rather than soothe. He stepped forward with deliberate grace, closing the space between them. "It won't hurt. Just close your eyes."
Haneul saw the glint of the needle and snapped out of his paralysis with a surge of rage, shouting as his body lunged forward. "Don't you touch him!"
But Hyeonjae anticipated the outburst. In a single, fluid motion, he spun toward Haneul, releasing a violent sweep of his arm.
A cloud of pale, acrid powder burst forth from his palm, scattering into the air like smoke.
The bitter sting struck Haneul's eyes and throat instantly, forcing him into a choking fit as his vision blurred and his momentum collapsed beneath him.
Coughing, wheezing, Haneul stumbled to his knees, his vision swimming, throat burning with each ragged inhale. He tried to rise again, but his body betrayed him, swaying uncontrollably as his limbs refused his desperate commands.
Hyeonjae wasted no time.
He pivoted back toward Taejun, whose terror-stricken eyes remained locked on his approaching figure.
The child tried to scramble backward, feet slipping against the warped wooden floor, but Hyeonjae's hand shot out with unsettling precision, gripping the back of Taejun's neck with an unnatural strength.
"No more running," Hyeonjae whispered into the boy's ear. His voice was a breath of poison. "Sleep now. Sleep tight. Sweet dream~"
With terrifying delicacy, he drove the needle into the soft hollow just beneath Taejun's ear.
Taejun flinched, a thin gasp escaping his lips, but the liquid worked instantly.
His small body spasmed once, his limbs giving a feeble jerk as his knees buckled beneath him.
His eyelids fluttered, mouth parting in a silent exhale.
Within seconds, his consciousness dissolved under the weight of the foreign toxin, his limp form collapsing forward into Hyeonjae's waiting arms.
Haneul, still on his knees, could barely force out a strangled cry. "No- no, please—" His voice was shredded by the powder's sting.
Hyeonjae straightened, cradling the unconscious child in his arms as though holding something sacred, his expression unreadable beneath the sheen of pale sweat that now glazed his skin.
His eyes flicked once toward Haneul, narrowed with cold satisfaction.
"You always wait too long, Hyung-ah," he said softly, as if offering a final insult rather than a farewell. "Now, he belongs to me."
Without another word, Hyeonjae turned and strode toward the narrow stairwell leading into the deeper chambers of the rotting house, his silhouette vanishing into the dark as the weight of Haneul's failure settled like ice in his chest.
The dim light flickered, and then the house seemed to exhale once more.
The house had already devoured them whole, but now the air itself grew impossibly heavier, as though the walls leaned in closer with each faltering breath Haneul managed to drag through his burning throat.
His fingers scraped weakly across the rotting floorboards, desperate for any leverage, but his muscles trembled, disobeying him beneath the dizzying fog swirling behind his eyes.
The acrid taste of the powder still clung to his tongue, its bitterness crawling down into his chest like a swarm of needles.
His vision swam, shapes bending and distorting, but even through the distortion, he could see Taejun's small body hanging limply in Hyeonjae's arms, fragile, weightless, utterly defenseless.
Taejun's head lolled against Hyeonjae's shoulder, strands of hair falling across his slack face as if to shield him from the nightmare unfolding around him.
Hyeonjae paused at the edge of the stairs, holding the unconscious child as though carrying a prize rather than a person.
His pale fingers curled around Taejun's thin frame with unsettling ease, his chin dipping slightly as he glanced back toward the man still collapsed on the floor.
The faint glow from the failing chandelier painted strange shadows across his face, exaggerating every contour, stretching his grin into something unnatural.
The glimmer in his narrowed eyes was not triumph alone, it was something far crueler, as if he were savoring each second of Haneul's collapse, feeding off the slow unraveling of a man crushed beneath the weight of his helplessness.
Haneul tried again to rise. His palms slid against the warped wood, legs trembling as he forced them beneath him, joints locking in protest.
His heart thundered like an angry fist against his ribs, driving him forward, but the haze clouding his lungs made every breath jagged and raw.
Still, he dragged himself upright inch by inch, refusing to surrender.
The iron rod lay just beyond his reach, mocking him with its cold gleam beneath the swaying light.
His fingers stretched toward it, knuckles whitening as he clenched his jaw to steady the vertigo threatening to pull him back down.
"I won't let you—" Haneul rasped, voice shredded into a whisper that barely broke the oppressive quiet.
But Hyeonjae didn't stop. His steps were unhurried, graceful even, as though he carried no burden at all.
The creaking boards beneath his feet groaned under his passing weight, echoing in rhythm with Haneul's labored gasps.
At the top of the staircase, he paused once more, shifting Taejun's small frame in his grasp like adjusting a fragile doll.
"You were never strong enough to make the hard choices," Hyeonjae murmured, his voice a low thread of silk woven with contempt. "You watched one brother slip beneath the dirt. And now you'll watch the other slip beneath me."
The words tore into Haneul's chest like barbed wire, each syllable twisting deeper into the wound of his guilt.
His vision flared with a sudden burst of rage, his fingertips finally brushing against the cool surface of the rod.
The moment his fist closed around it, something inside him snapped, a desperate surge, erupting from the pit of his stomach and breaking through the fog clouding his mind.
With a ragged cry, he forced his failing legs forward, stumbling in a wild, staggering charge toward the stairs.
His boots slammed against the floor, each step unsteady yet driven by fury that refused to be silenced.
The rod gleamed in his grip, raised high like a spear as his pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the house's groaning protests.
But Hyeonjae had already vanished beyond the turn of the stairwell, his shadow melting into the darkness like smoke slipping between cracks.
The sound of his fading footsteps echoed upward, steady and unhurried, as though the panic clawing at Haneul's throat was nothing more than entertainment to him.
And clutched against his chest, Taejun remained eerily still, breath faint, limbs slack, face pale beneath the sickly flicker of light.
Haneul barreled up the staircase, the rod trembling in his grasp as he ascended with reckless, frenzied momentum.
His vision pulsed in and out of focus, the warped walls seeming to tighten around him, narrowing into a suffocating tunnel that forced him forward.
The house reeked of old wood and something fouler beneath it, the scent of damp decay rising like steam from unseen cracks.
"Taejun!" his voice tore through the corridor like a wounded animal, raw and splintered.
There was no reply, only the retreating echoes of his voice bouncing back at him.
He reached the landing, eyes darting down the narrowing hallway where faint, retreating footprints marred the thick layer of dust carpeting the floor.
His chest heaved violently, blood pounding beneath his skin as he sprinted after the trail, his boots thudding against the boards with growing desperation.
The air ahead grew colder, thickening with every step, as though the very air had turned against him, eager to choke the fight from his lungs.
Up ahead, a door stood slightly ajar, a faint glow bleeding through the gap.
The closer he drew, the louder the pulse of his heartbeat became, thundering inside his skull until it was all he could hear.
Without hesitation, he kicked the door open with a violent crack, sending the warped wood crashing against the wall.
The room beyond was drenched in shadows that writhed against the trembling light of a single hanging bulb.
In the center stood Hyeonjae, still cradling the limp child with a tenderness that mocked everything Haneul had fought for.
His head tilted slightly as he regarded Haneul's wild entrance, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face as though the outcome had been decided long before either of them had stepped foot inside.
"You always come late," Hyeonjae whispered, his voice echoing like a lullaby twisted by cruelty. "And you always come empty-handed."
Haneul raised the rod higher, his knuckles whitening, breath shuddering as rage and terror clashed violently inside him.
"Give him back," Haneul rasped, his voice shaking but filled with venom. "You won't take him."
But Hyeonjae's grin deepened, his eyes gleaming with a cold, unsettling calm as he took a step back, deeper into the shadows that coiled like waiting serpents.
"You're still playing a game you've already lost. Face it, you're never going to make it."