CHAPTER NINETEEN: Below the Floorboards (Sangwoo in Hell)
It looked like his house.
But it wasn't.
The lights were always dim—never off, never bright.
The air felt stale, thick, like something had died inside the walls years ago and was still rotting.
He stepped into the kitchen, barefoot, and the linoleum peeled beneath his soles like skin.
He looked outside the window.
There was no sky. No world.
Just black. Not even stars.
Only the color of closed eyes.
The clock on the wall had no hands. The fridge hummed, but the power was gone. The faucet dripped—blood, not water. It pattered onto a floor that never dried.
Sangwoo stood in the center of the room, chest rising and falling fast.
"Yoonbum?" he called.
Nothing.
Again:
"Yoonbum!"
The echo returned distorted, like someone laughing through broken teeth.
He backed away. And the floor gave way beneath him.
There was no warning. No sound.
Just that pull.
Like gravity had reversed—like the house was swallowing him.
He fell, arms flailing, body twisting—
—but landed back on his feet.
In the hallway.
The one outside the bathroom. Tiles smeared red. The stench of old urine and rot.
He looked down.
A trail of bloody footprints led to the basement door.
Bare. Small. Familiar.
Yoonbum's.
He followed them.
Hand on the doorknob. It was ice.
The moment he twisted it open— screaming.
High-pitched. Panicked. Painful.
Yoonbum's voice.
He bolted down the stairs.
"Yoonbum, I'm here!"
But the basement didn't change.
It was the same scene. The chair.
The ropes. The blood on the floor, congealed like old paint.
Yoonbum slumped forward.
Head bowed. Mouth parted slightly.
Eyes glazed over.
Dead.
Again.
Sangwoo's hands trembled.
"No… No, this already happened. I buried this—"
The light blinked out.
Dark.
Silence.
Then—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps above.
He turned. Ran back up the stairs— But when he reached the top, he was in the basement again.
Same chair. Same blood.
Same corpse.
Again.
And again.
And again.
It never stopped.
He screamed.
He kicked walls until his feet split. He tore open cabinets.
He slammed mirrors with his fists— but his reflection was never there.
Only Yoonbum's dead face.
Staring back. As if to say: You did this.
And maybe that's what hell really was.
Not fire.
Not punishment from some invisible god.
Just the echo of your own sins.
Forever.
The things you can't undo.
Looping. Until even your screams run dry.
Hours passed. Days. Or maybe none at all. Time didn't exist here.
Not anymore.
Only one thing was certain:
There was no door. No window. No way out.
Sangwoo was alone. Trapped in the ruins of his own making.
And for once— He wasn't in control.