He hadn't returned to the hospital since the day of her death.
Hospitals smelled like bleach and the end of things. Ji-hoon didn't need his eyes to know that—he could feel it in the way people whispered just a little quieter when they walked the halls, in the way footsteps slowed down as if trying to delay the inevitable. Hospitals were where people waited for either miracles or closures. And Room 507 had given him neither.
Joon-won had made the call. The same detective who'd investigated the case was still active, and the files hadn't been destroyed like Ji-hoon feared. But one document had stood out. A nurse's note—brief, hastily written, but present.
"Unusual activity reported in Room 507, 11:37 PM, lights flickering, door ajar. Nurse Kim entered, found signs of struggle, subject unconscious. Male voice overheard but unidentified. Requesting security footage."
But there had never been any footage. That was the first clue that things had gone wrong.
The second clue was that nobody had ever followed up on the report.
Room 507 had been where his mother died. But it wasn't just a room. It was a stage. A hidden performance no one spoke of. And Ji-hoon had returned, now, years later—not with flowers, not with tears, but with a recorder in his coat and fury in his chest.
The air was colder than he remembered.
He didn't have to see it to feel the weight of that room. The static still clung to the walls like it hadn't forgotten. Like it remembered exactly what happened that night. He reached out slowly, fingers brushing the doorframe before stepping inside.
Everything had changed.
The bedsheets were new. The machines replaced. The scent sterile and empty.
But the silence?
The silence was exactly the same.
Joon-won had offered to come with him. But Ji-hoon had said no. This was something he had to feel with his own skin. Something he had to hear in the way the air breathed in this room.
He walked to the center and stood still.
In his hand was the locket. In his pocket, the recorder. His heartbeat was slow and steady, like it knew this was sacred ground. Like it understood that this room had held the final moments of the woman who built his entire life from pain and lullabies.
He knelt where the hospital bed once stood.
"She fought here," he whispered. "She screamed here."
The memory unfolded in the dark behind his eyes—constructed from what Ji-eun had told him, from what the detective hinted at. His mother, cornered. Si-wan's voice, soft and sharp, telling her it didn't have to end like this. The pressure of a pillow. The absence of sound. A nurse opening the door just seconds too late.
Ji-hoon reached into his coat and pulled out the voice recorder. He pressed record.
"She died here. But you lived."
He didn't know who he was speaking to—maybe to Si-wan. Maybe to the room itself. Maybe to the echo of his mother's breath as it left her lungs one final time.
"You left her here. You walked out like you were never here."
His voice trembled. He didn't stop.
"You left her here."
There were bloodstains once. Scratches on the floor. A nurse said the bed was crooked. The heart monitor had flatlined, but no one had heard it in time. And Ji-hoon imagined it now, imagined his mother gasping for air while Si-wan watched with those calm, cold eyes.
"You didn't just kill her. You made sure I would never see the world the same again."
He stood slowly, breath fogging around his mouth even though the air wasn't cold enough.
"You made this room her coffin."
Then something happened.
It started as a flicker.
The overhead lights buzzed. Flicked off. On again.
Ji-hoon's heart jumped. He didn't move.
Then he heard it—faint, almost nothing. But it was there.
A breath.
Not his.
Behind him.
He turned, slow. Every inch of his skin felt electrified.
But there was no one there.
The door was still closed.
But Ji-hoon knew that sound. The hospital had been empty. They had arranged the visit at night, past visitor hours, with no patients in this wing. It had been scheduled. Confirmed.
So whose breath had that been?
Then something clicked against the tile floor.
Footsteps.
Too light to be a man.
Too slow to be a nurse.
He turned again—nothing.
The lights buzzed once more and held steady.
Ji-hoon knelt and picked up the recorder.
He pressed stop.
He held it against his chest and whispered, "I'll take this sound with me."
And that was when he noticed something in the corner of the room.
A sharp shift in the air.
The sound of a door that wasn't there.
He walked to the wall and pressed his hand against it. Brick. Cold. Then downward—until his hand hit something metal.
A grate.
Small.
He knelt, fingers tracing it. It had been recently disturbed.
Ji-hoon felt his chest tighten.
Someone had been here.
Recently.
And they hadn't come through the door.
He stood slowly.
And he realized something terrifying.
Room 507 was still being used.
Not by patients.
Not by doctors.
But by someone who thought this room still belonged to them.
And whoever they were—
They had just watched him grieve.
He left without running. Without panicking.
He walked out the same way he'd entered.
But every step out of Room 507 felt like walking away from a trap he'd accidentally survived.
The recorder burned in his pocket.
The grate was real.
The breath was real.
And somewhere, someone had been listening.
Ji-hoon should have gone home.
He should have called Joon-won, told him what he found, maybe cried a little, maybe locked himself in the music room and played something raw and painful until the strings on his heart snapped. That would've been the right way to process what happened in Room 507.
But he didn't.
Instead, he waited. Outside the hospital. In the dark.
He stood beneath a flickering streetlamp like a shadow in mourning. The city hummed quietly around him—cars in the distance, a train far off, the usual urban lullaby—but he wasn't listening. His ears were tuned to something else now. That click of movement behind him in the hospital. That breath that had broken the silence in a dead woman's room.
Someone had been there. Someone had watched him.
And someone had gotten away.
So Ji-hoon stayed. Long past midnight. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for—maybe a ghost, maybe a second chance, maybe a mistake from whoever had been hiding behind the walls. But around 2:37 a.m., the hospital doors creaked open with a hiss of hydraulics. Ji-hoon froze.
A figure stepped out. Not in a uniform. Not a nurse.
A janitor's cart rolled behind him, wheels soft against the pavement. But there was something off. The man didn't walk like a janitor. Too careful. Too alert. He moved like someone who expected to be followed.
Ji-hoon didn't think.
He reacted.
He followed.
Every step was a silent prayer to the ground not to betray him. His cane was folded and tucked away now—he moved by sound, by memory, by instinct.
The man didn't notice him at first. But Ji-hoon could hear how he walked. Light on his feet. Stopping every now and then to check something behind him. This wasn't his first time sneaking around. And Ji-hoon knew—neither was mine.
The man turned into a back alley. Ji-hoon's heart hammered.
This was stupid.
This was reckless.
This was dangerous.
And he did it anyway.
He pressed against the wall, breathing in the scent of old cigarettes and rain-soaked asphalt. His hand hovered near the recorder again, fingers itching to turn it on. But then—
A voice.
"You shouldn't be here."
Ji-hoon flinched.
The man had heard him.
"You shouldn't be following people you can't see."
He stepped forward, closer. Ji-hoon took a cautious step back, but the alley was narrow. He was trapped.
"I wasn't following," Ji-hoon said quietly.
"You were."
"Then you know why."
A pause. Then a chuckle. Low, mean.
"You think I had something to do with Yoo Ara's death?"
Ji-hoon's mouth went dry. "You said her name."
"I cleaned the floor she died on."
"No one else knew where she died."
Another pause. This one longer. More dangerous.
"I saw you go into that room," the man said. "You don't belong in there."
"She was my mother."
The silence that followed was heavy, choked in filth and night air.
Then something snapped.
A fast step.
Ji-hoon ducked instinctively—he didn't need vision to feel danger.
A fist grazed past his cheek, slamming into the brick wall behind him.
Ji-hoon twisted, elbow catching the man's ribs—not hard, but enough to startle.
The man cursed, grabbed Ji-hoon by the shoulder.
"You don't get to bring her up," he growled.
"She died for me," Ji-hoon hissed, yanking himself away.
"Then you should've died too."
Those words landed like a gunshot.
Ji-hoon didn't hold back this time.
He lunged forward, not with fists, but with words that burned like acid.
"She trusted someone. That's why she's dead. But not just anyone—someone close. Someone who knew when she'd be alone. Someone who had access to that room."
A deep breath. Ji-hoon tilted his head.
"Was it you? Or did you just help clean up the mess?"
The man said nothing. That was the answer.
Ji-hoon stepped back, chest heaving. "I should go to the police."
The man chuckled darkly. "They won't believe a blind boy who sees ghosts."
"I'm not the one hiding in vents," Ji-hoon snapped.
Another beat of silence. Then Ji-hoon did something he shouldn't have.
He pulled out the recorder and hit play.
The breath. The footsteps. The faint flicker of static.
The man flinched.
"You recorded me?"
Ji-hoon tilted his head. "I record everything now. Especially lies."
"You're insane."
"No," Ji-hoon said. "I'm broken. That's different."
The man lunged again—this time grabbing Ji-hoon's coat. But Ji-hoon was faster. He jammed the recorder into the man's chest and hit record again.
"Say it," he whispered. "Say what you did."
"You think you can threaten me?"
"I'm not threatening," Ji-hoon whispered back. "I'm remembering."
And then the man shoved him.
Ji-hoon hit the wall hard, the back of his head smacking brick.
Pain exploded behind his eyes—useless eyes—but it didn't matter.
He was laughing now. Laughing through blood in his mouth.
Because he'd gotten it.
He'd gotten the man's voice.
His threat.
His guilt.
He had it on tape.
"You're dead," the man hissed.
"No," Ji-hoon whispered, coughing. "You are. You just don't know it yet."
The man hesitated. Then footsteps—retreating.
Ji-hoon slumped against the wall, heart thundering in his chest.
He should have gone home.
He should have told Joon-won.
He should have let the ghosts be.
But now he had something more powerful than safety.
He had truth.
And truth?
Truth bleeds.
Truth bites.
Truth buries the guilty in its teeth.
He laughed softly, bitterly, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
Room 507 had spoken to him.
Now he was going to make the whole world listen.
He didn't know how long he sat there after the man left—knees scraped, back against the wall, fingers trembling. The cold from the pavement seeped into his skin, but Ji-hoon barely noticed. His ears were still ringing from the slam into the wall, and his heart beat like it was trying to punch its way out of his ribs. But beneath it all was something else.
A fire.
Slow. Controlled. Burning steady now.
Room 507 hadn't been a dead end. It had been a door. And Ji-hoon had stepped through.
He pressed his hand to the small recorder in his pocket, still warm from his grip. That man's voice was now his. His threat, his fear, his guilt. Ji-hoon had it. Not because he was strong. Not because he was smart. But because he was desperate enough to dig for ghosts.
He forced himself to stand. Every muscle protested. His head throbbed where it hit the bricks, and a bruise was already forming on his jaw. But he didn't care. He used the wall to guide himself forward, each footstep heavier than the last. His cane was gone—lost somewhere in the chaos—but his ears were sharper than ever.
He didn't need to see the world to hunt what was hiding in it.
That man had made a mistake. He'd let Ji-hoon walk away.
And now?
Ji-hoon was going to bury him with the truth. Not through fists. Not through fire.
Through music. Through silence. Through everything his mother had taught him.
The world thought he was broken.
But broken things cut the deepest.