CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Where the Silence Lives (Yoonbum is Dead)
He hadn't noticed the silence at first. It was gentle.
Wrapped around him like a blanket pulled up too high.
But now it was absolute.
No heartbeat. No breathing. No pain.
Yoonbum stood in the white room, staring at Sangwoo.
But something was wrong. The man before him— He wasn't really here.
He was breaking at the edges, like static trying to hold a human shape.
The illusion was unraveling.
So was Yoonbum.
Sangwoo's mouth moved, again and again:
"You left me behind.""You left me behind.""You left me—"
Then silence.
His image glitched—once—then vanished.
Gone.
And Yoonbum remembered.
Not just the attic. Not the screams.
Not even the day he tried to run.
No—he remembered the end. The real end.
The way Sangwoo's hands trembled when he said, "If you leave me, I'll die."
And Yoonbum—shaking, crying—had whispered:
"Then die."
What followed was a blur. A flash of steel. His own blood—warm and bright. A gasp. A fall.
And nothing.
He had died. In that house. On that floor.
In front of the man who said he loved him.
Now, this place— This purgatory of echoing halls and broken mirrors—
It wasn't a dream.
It was the memory of a soul that hadn't yet realized it was free.
He looked down at his hands. There was no blood anymore.
No wounds. No fear.
Just quiet.
And then—
A voice. Not Sangwoo's. Calm. Low. Familiar.
"He never stopped looking for you."
Yoonbum turned.
Seungbae stood there.
But not the Seungbae he remembered. This one looked tired. Older. Worn down by grief, not obsession.
Yoonbum blinked.
"Why are you here?"
Seungbae's voice was almost a whisper. "I was chasing a ghost."
He stepped forward. "But I think… I needed to know you were real. That you mattered."
Yoonbum looked past him.
The room was fading. The walls growing brighter. Thin. Transparent.
The other side waited.
He swallowed. "I don't feel scared anymore."
Seungbae gave a slow nod. "You shouldn't. You're free now."
And as the room dissolved into white, Yoonbum took one final look behind him.
The bloodstained house.
The ropes. The pain.
All gone.
He stepped forward— into light. Into peace.
And somewhere, far away, in a dim hospital room, a flatline hummed its final note.
Yoonbum was dead. But he was no longer trapped.