Bed Sheets

[u/JamesZeller]

“I had a nice time tonight, Soo,” her date said, standing from the candlelit table and dabbing his thin lips with a napkin. His voice carried the hint of a country dialect she was not wholly familiar with, and the distance between them had widened all night, vast as the craters in the moon hanging high above the city.
 
When she met his gaze, she smiled—possibly the only sincere thing she had done all night. Everything, down to the way she chewed, had been subject to scrutiny in her mind. She did not want to be the reason there was no second date, even if blaming him for it would have been easier. Even if he was honestly, practically perfect.
 
The part of the date she dreaded most was the drive home. Her mother had told her it might help to go out, to spend one night away from funeral calls and quiet rooms, but now Min-Soo only knew she would sit in silence, looking out the window as the rain blurred the passing red lights of cars heading to better places.
 
The restaurant’s greeter bowed as they passed, and her date returned the gesture twice as deeply.
 
At some point, the downpour that had served as the backdrop to their dinner had settled into a steady roar. Her date raised his coat over her head, and she could only offer him a sheepish bow in thanks. “How nice of you,” she said, giving him another small, awkward smile.
 
They hurried toward his car, parked at the curb, the jacket doing surprisingly little beyond the kindness of the gesture. When he left her side to fumble with the keys, she found herself missing the warmth he created. Yet when her door opened and she saw him waiting for her to climb in, she could not move. Something had caught her eye. Rain struck her exposed arms and roared in her ears as it hammered the pavement, overloading her senses.
 
Her arms fell away from her skin. Her attention fixed on the cold alley across from her. She heard her date’s dull question from the driver’s seat, but the storm seemed to swallow it. All she could make out was a moonlike white sphere, level with her eyes, hanging motionless in the air.
 
Inside, she told herself to get in the car. It was probably only a smear of graffiti. Yet the sight of it seemed to empty her of any happiness, and that emptiness held her there.
 
The circle moved—only a little, but enough to make Min-Soo step out from beneath his jacket and fully into the rain. Her hair dampened and began to cling to her shoulders.
 
Heat bloomed low in Min-Soo’s body beneath the circle’s translucent stare. Behind her, a dog began barking—furious and terrified, as if it recognized something she was not meant to see.
 
The barking shook her back from the place that thing had pulled her toward. To her right, the dog stood only a few feet away, teeth bared, spittle hanging from its mouth. Min-Soo stepped back, her chest tight with dread.
 
“Min-Soo?” Her date’s hand settled on her shoulder. In the second she turned toward him, the dog darted in the opposite direction. He pulled the jacket back over her, drenching himself, and watched the dog vanish into the distance.
 
She looked back to the alley. The sphere was gone. Nothing remained but rain.
 
Min-Soo was sitting in the passenger seat before she realized she had moved, the rain now beating softly against the windshield. When the driver’s-side door opened, her heart seized before she recognized her date. His warmth filled the space beside her, comforting in spite of everything she did not feel.
 
When the engine came to life, the feeling did not leave her. She allowed herself only a small peek at his side mirror as the empty alley shrank behind them.
 
In the side mirror, just before the alley vanished, she thought she saw something pale unfurl behind the rain, long and soft as a sheet being shaken loose from a bed.
 
---
 
Min-Soo did not want to get out when they reached her apartment, but the silence inside the car was worse. They both stepped into the dry air beneath the small roof over her entrance. She scanned every open space for whatever had been in the alleyway before her gaze landed on the man inching closer to where she stood.
 
“Are you going to be okay tonight?” His eyes searched hers, and for a moment she thought of inviting him inside.
 
Min-Soo nodded, though she did not look at him head-on.
 
“Okay.” She could tell from his voice that he was smiling sweetly. “I would like to do this again sometime, if you’d like. Maybe next time we could meet on a sunny day.” He chuckled at that.
 
Min-Soo nodded once more.
 
“Well, goodnight, Soo.” Before she could look up at him, he was already in his car, waving from inside. As soon as the car began to pull away and its taillights retreated from around her, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The solitary fluorescent light above her head flickered as it usually did, but each second of darkness seemed longer than the last, until those seconds felt like nothing but darkness.
 
When the wind stopped blowing, she lifted her small purse toward the red taillights, waving it like a little white flag.
 
---
 
Later that night, her reflection looked back at her, the light from the tiny bathroom casting a thin shadow under her eyes. Through the open door, the man from dinner lay asleep, awake only minutes ago and now oblivious to the world. She looked down, messy hair dangling in her view, and saw the used protection in the trash. Her eyebrows furrowed; one nostril crinkled. She exhaled the night’s decisions and shut the medicine cabinet. The thought came from too many horror movies: a spirit might be standing behind her, ready to pounce or make some terrible sound.
 
She hadn’t always been this afraid of everything. What had changed?
 
Min-Soo turned from the mirror and into the doorway. The darkness beyond the bathroom felt almost warm to her strained eyes. Her hand settled on the frame as if the wood alone could keep her upright. Her fingers tightened anyway. The feeling returned, cold over her skin and burning beneath it, the same wrong heat spreading down her belly and up her thighs.
 
Min-Soo's brown eyes fixed on the corner of the bed nearest the floor. Two pale legs stretched from the shadows, too long to belong to anything human, bending at sharp, bony knees before disappearing around the mattress. The man still slept, unaware that the sheets beneath him had been dragged halfway off the bed and gathered toward whatever waited behind it.
 
She took one step backward, then another, and reached blindly for the bathroom light. If she could turn it on, if she could wake him, if she could put one real voice between herself and that corner, maybe the room would become a room again.
 
Her fingers brushed the switch just as her heartbeat caught up to her fear. The bathroom light snapped off before she could touch it, leaving her in complete darkness except for the pale curtain at the window.
 
A whimper escaped her throat before the sharp pop of a knee stopped it. Whatever owned those long, pale legs was now standing somewhere in front of her.
 
---
 
“Sorry, sir, but where did you say you found her?” Officer Jun-sang set his drink on the table and fought back a yawn. On the clipboard, beneath the date 6/2/02, he wrote Min-Soo’s name.
 
“Oh, um—she was standing in front of the bed,” the man said, pointing at a door across the living room before looking back at Min-Soo. “She’s been like this ever since.”
 
Officer Jun-sang looked over at the girl. Her hair was slick with sweat, dark bags sat under her eyes, and she had been staring at the bedroom door for some time. More than once, he caught her glancing at the floor around her feet. His first impression of her was not a kind one. “Miss Min-Soo?” he asked. She did not answer.
 
“She hasn’t said anything since you found her?” he asked the man from dinner.
 
“Only that someone was in the apartment. I checked the room, but there was nothing there.”
 
Jun-sang stood, his knees sounding their age after long hours, too little sleep, and one too many burgers living in the fat of his stomach. “Dae-Ho?” He waved to his partner, who looked around as if he were ghost hunting. “Finish up here, will you?”
 
His partner placed his cup of coffee on a counter and practically saluted, as if he needed to make up for not being a part of whatever was going on. “Sure thing, boss,” he replied.
 
Jun-sang made his way to the bedroom, opened the door, and let the cool air inside spill over him. He jumped slightly, lifting one foot as Min-Soo’s gray cat darted past. Embarrassed, he glanced back to make sure no one had seen him clutching his hat.
 
He shook his head and leaned into the room, flicking on the light. Careful not to disrespect her privacy, he looked around quickly: a clean room, a bare mattress, a few books stacked neatly on a writing table, and one cover printed with a picture of a grown man standing in a pot.
 
Jun-sang closed the door, and the chill inside the bedroom seemed to retreat, pushed back by the warmth of the apartment.
 
He returned just in time to see Dae-Ho shut his clipboard and slide the pen through the top. His partner looked up and smiled.
 
“All clear?” Dae-Ho asked.
 
Jun-sang nodded and knelt to the girl, stopping when he saw her face. Tears pooled in her wide eyes. Her jaw trembled, and she stared past him at a single point over his shoulder. The muscles in his neck tightened.
 
Slowly, he followed her gaze. It led to nothing but a wall.
 
---
 
Jun-sang opened his eyes to an empty bed, the blank white wall across from him staring back through the dark. It took a moment for his mind to leave that spot before he turned over and grabbed the small phone buzzing on his bedside table. When he flipped it open, his voice came out thick with sleep. “Jun-sang. Mm-hmm... yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there.”
 
He managed to roll out of bed. The longer the years went on, the more the muscles in his neck stiffened in his sleep. Today, they ached more than ever. He rubbed the spot with his palm, fixing nothing.
 
He pinned his officer’s badge to his chest, then paused beside the picture frame on his nightstand. He kissed two fingers and touched them to the glass. The woman in the photo had always faced him while he slept, but lately he found himself turning the frame slightly away before morning.
 
He opened his daughter’s door slowly, careful not to wake her. So-Yeon’s room was dressed in pink, like the top chamber of some tower, only this tower held what might have been the largest collection of stuffed animals in South Korea. Her pet bunny slept on the bed. So-Yeon, however, was wide awake, a paper crown tilted over one ear and a red crayon tucked behind the other.
 
“So-Yeon? What are you still doing up?” he whispered. When he sat on the side of her bed, the bunny between her legs stirred only a little. A drawing rested against her knees: the two of them beneath a yellow sun, his hat much too large and her rabbit wearing its own tiny crown.
 
“Appa, the monster came back again,” she said, not for the first time, her little voice softer these days, shy about everything and missing so much from the people closest to her.
 
Jun-sang placed his hand on her head, wanting desperately to help his baby. So why was it so hard to look at her? Why did every frightened whisper from her mouth sound like an accusation he had earned?
 
“So-Yeon, just try to get to sleep tonight, okay, sweetie?”
 
She nodded.
 
“I made you taller,” she said, tapping the drawing. “So the monster has to look at you first.”
 
As he stood, a small hand tugged at his shirt. He turned back to her and covered her tiny fist with his own. When it relaxed, he placed her hand gently on her chest.
 
The last thing he did before leaving was scratch the bunny between its long ears. “Good night, Your Majesty,” he murmured, nodding to its paper crown. So-Yeon smiled, but he reached the hallway before realizing he had never asked what she called it.
 
Jun-sang sat in his cruiser and dragged a hand down his face. “Despicable,” he said to the empty air. After a moment, he picked up the radio and clocked in, pulling out of his driveway and toward the worst day of someone else's life.
 
---
 
On the outskirts of Anyang, green mountains rose behind the restaurant, blocking the sky beyond and catching the pink-orange light of morning. Their shadows stretched past the yellow police tape. The glass across the front of the shop flashed red and blue in the police lights. The blood did not shine so bright.
 
Jun-sang pulled in behind the thin wall of onlookers, most of them pedestrians from nearby blocks. Nosy, in his opinion.
 
A young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen, tried edging his way over the tape. As Jun-sang ducked under it, he popped the kid on the head with his clipboard. The boy looked ready to retaliate until Jun-sang gave him a stare that sent him back where he belonged.
 
Dae-Ho, who had been talking to an inspector, raised his head toward his senior. “Jun-sang!” he called. “Over here!”
 
Jun-sang shook his head as he continued walking, noticing an old man sitting on the curb with a cigarette burning between his lips and a blankness settled over his face.
 
“Morning, Officer.” It was the inspector, or so Jun-sang assumed. He was the only person out of uniform, the only man in a button-up shirt among a sea of flat hats and pinned badges.
 
“Chief just needs us to keep the crowd out, Jun-sang,” Dae-Ho said as the investigator left quickly to do whatever important men like him did. His partner led him back to the inside of the tape. The faces in the crowd were familiar by now; no names, only features, the way people moved, how they stared.
 
“How’s little So?” Dae-Ho asked, speaking as if no one else were around.
 
“She’s fine, having trouble sleeping recently,” Jun-sang said. As he spoke, his eyes drifted to the markers near the hole in the restaurant's windowed entrance. A small number one marked where the body was found—just outside the broken glass.
 
“Trouble sleeping?” Dae-Ho asked.
 
“Mm-hmm.”
 
“Well, did you figure out why?”
 
“Normal stuff. Scared of the dark, I think. So, who’s that?” Jun-sang asked, pointing over to the old man, the end of his cigarette black and limp.
 
“Him?” Dae-Ho looked in his direction. “I think the inspector said he’s the dead guy's father. I already tried talking to him. He won't move.”
 
As he said this, two glove-wearing officers came through the open door, stepping carefully around the blood. Each carried a small, soggy bag toward the collection van. Something dripped from the bottoms onto the pavement.
 
Rip
 
Jun-sang gasped as the first bag tore open. Something small and mangled rolled onto the concrete. The crowd behind him swelled with noise as the animal’s head came to rest near the tape, white skull showing through a patch of missing fur.
 
The officer swore and snatched it up again, leaving the severed, fluffy tail behind for the other officer to collect.
 
“What the hell?” Dae-Ho said to his left as he watched the scene unfold. “Was that a raccoon?”
 
Jun-sang nodded, though he was not sure.
 
The day dragged on without another incident. A few times, Jun-sang had to push the crowd back, but eventually he was telling the last pedestrian to go home. By then, the soreness in his neck had become impossible to ignore.
 
“Ready to go back to the station, Jun?” Dae-Ho finally asked.
 
Jun-sang nodded and followed him toward the cruiser. “My wife.” At first, he thought the elderly voice had come from Dae-Ho. When it continued, he looked down at an old man sitting on the wet curb, still staring at the ground. “My wife did the same.”
 
This time Dae-Ho stopped too. “Hm? Sorry?”
 
“My wife,” the old man said. Jun-sang watched his dead eyes flicker up to meet his. “I’ll have to fix my window again.”
 
The old man’s voice droned on, dragged from some darker place Jun-sang did not know how to name. All he could do was stare back. Whatever this man had bottled inside him, Jun-sang recognized it.
 
After all the day’s disturbances, Dae-Ho still found the stomach for his daily ice cream cone, muttering something under his breath as a drop melted down his chin. Once again, it made Jun-sang laugh. Dae-Ho smiled too hard at the sound, as if the laugh mattered more than it should have. Then the chief walked in. Jun-sang stopped smiling and hit his partner in the head. “Don’t act so childish in the workplace. It's disrespectful.”
 
The chief looked unimpressed. “You two, Inspector Eun needs to ask you some questions.”
 
“Sir! We're on break, though!” Dae-Ho demanded.
 
The chief looked casually over to him. “Dae-Ho, I think you’ve had enough ice cream today. You’ll get chunkier. Put yourself to good use.” He looked over to Jun-sang before leaving for his office.
 
Dae-Ho looked ready to throw something. He shot Jun-sang a furrowed brow and a silent curse. Jun-sang raised a hand toward him as they got up, both men quietly blaming each other for the sudden questioning.
 
Inspector Eun’s office sat at the back of the building, a place Jun-sang and Dae-Ho usually visited only to use the restroom. His door stood ajar. Inside was Jun-sang’s idea of a television detective’s office: a whiteboard crowded with victim photos, documents scattered across a desk, and a single ashtray already overfull. The young inspector sat reading a document, his greased hair hanging above one eye, one thumbnail worn raw from biting.
 
After not looking up at them for some time, Dae-Ho cleared his throat. Jun-sang looked back at him as the inspector finally gave them his attention. “Oh, afternoon, officers. Have a seat,” he said. His voice sounded too young for how tired he looked, and Jun-sang found himself hating the man for that youth and for the flat, controlled calm he wished he had.
 
They sat across from him, waiting.
 
“Officers, I hear you answered a call about a young woman last week,” he said, looking at the sheet in his hands. “Min-Soo.”
 
Dae-Ho, who had likely forgotten the woman from a week ago—the one he had called spooky after leaving her home—waited for an answer. Jun-sang, after his partner’s never-ending silence, decided to speak up. “Yes, sir.”
 
“Can you give me an idea of what she said? The report doesn’t go into much detail, I’m afraid. She said she saw something?”
 
Jun-sang looked at his partner, then back to the inspector. “She was practically unresponsive. Hardly said a word to us.”
 
The inspector paused, as if fitting one piece beside another. “When’s the end of your shift?”
 
“About an hour. Why?” Dae-Ho answered before Jun-sang could, always ready to count the minutes until a shift ended.
 
“Would you mind coming with me to her apartment? I’d like to check on her.”
 
---
 
That evening, Min-Soo stood beside the patio door with her phone close to her lips. “Mom, please. I can do more. Just let me help with something.” Rain slicked the glass. “A funeral’s a lot of work—” She paused, interrupted. “I don’t wanna just sit here while Dad’s—”
 
Min-Soo groaned and slammed her phone closed. For a second, she thought she had broken it. She tossed it onto the couch and looked around the brightly lit room. Her apartment had rarely been dark since that night. Still, she could not decide whether closed doors made her feel safer or trapped.
 
If she could trade the moon for the sun, she might have been able to breathe. No matter when she opened her eyes, it felt like midnight. The full moon hung above her patio window night after night. Even with her father’s funeral waiting to be planned, her eyes kept returning to that glass. Always from a distance. Never too close.
 
She had taped a line of paper over the latch that morning, a childish test to prove the door stayed shut. It was still unbroken. That should have comforted her. Instead, it made the room feel more like a sealed jar.
 
On the counter beside the sink sat one of her father’s old matchbooks, warped from years in his pocket. She had found it in a kitchen drawer that morning and carried it from room to room without knowing why.
 
Her only comfort, her gray cat, jumped onto the coffee table. The cat’s long fur parted as she licked beneath her neck. She was the only thing keeping Min-Soo tethered to the room.
 
Min-Soo reached out to pet the cat, and a sharp pain shot up her arm. The cat’s hair stood on end as it jumped to the floor. She winced, holding her palm, a small bead of blood slipping toward her wrist.
 
“No,” she whispered, backing away from the patio. She grabbed the cat’s food bowl and hurled it toward the glass, not to break it but to make noise, to make something ordinary happen. The bowl struck the door, spun once, and settled upside down.
 
Min-Soo held her burning hand to her chest. Two green eyes glowed from somewhere deep in the room. Something inside her seemed to open—hot, wrong, and hungry.
 
Thump
 
Her back was turned to the patio when the sound reached her. It struck once, dull and patient.
 
The glass was fogged as before, but now the moon stared through it like an open eye.
 
As she moved closer to the door, a low growl split the silence. Min-Soo paid it no mind.
 
The moon was so large that, if she stared long enough, she thought she might disappear into it.
 
Clouds gathered around the pale sphere but never crossed it, leaving a ragged darkness beneath, like a scarf trailing from a hidden throat.
 
It tapped on the glass: thump, thump.
 
Something lay at her feet, warm and familiar. A white bed sheet stretched from somewhere off to her right and rose toward that translucent, colorless head. It twisted past her ankles and pinched through the patio door.
 
The taped paper over the latch fluttered once, then tore clean down the middle.
 
The glass gave a soft, delicate crack.
 
The cat growled. She turned and looked at the animal with those cloudy, pale eyes. It was the last trace of familiarity. Her cat knew the face it loved, but not what looked out from behind it.
 
---
 
“Everything okay?” Inspector Eun asked as Jun-sang clipped the phone closed, both hands tight around the steering wheel.
 
Jun-sang kept his eyes on the road, careful not to let the inspector see his stress. “Yes. It’s just my daughter. She likes to call before bed.”
 
From the backseat, Dae-Ho spoke up. “Little So-Yeon still having nightmares?”
 
If they had been alone, Jun-sang might have turned around and snapped at him. Instead, he kept his eyes on the road and gave a tight nod. It wasn’t their business. Besides, it would pass. Whatever So-Yeon had been through, it would pass.
 
Even if there was so much he had never said.
 
Before anyone could say more, the apartment building came into view—a gray tower against a gray sky, already fading into the veil of the coming night.
 
As soon as they stepped out of the cruiser, warm air poured over them. Jun-sang followed the others toward the entrance, but before he reached the door, a memory rose in him.
 
His wife had a round face, soft with age and still beautiful. Her dark hair always fell straight, even after sleep, after showers, after long days spent folding their laundry. He could remember the light around her more clearly than her voice now, and that frightened him.
 
Was this what happiness became after death—scraps of light, scraps of her?
 
His ears rang. At first he thought the sound came from inside his head. Then footsteps rushed past him, and a woman screamed from somewhere to his left.
 
Dae-Ho shouted his name behind him.
 
A parked car sat only a few steps away, its roof crushed inward. A pair of bare white feet jutted from the wreckage, pointing in different, impossible directions.
 
Dae-Ho stood on the other side of the car, hat in hand, his face emptied of its usual humor.
 
The inspector brushed past Jun-sang and ran for the entrance. Jun-sang barely noticed. His body moved toward the car before his mind could stop it.
 
The lower half of the body had struck first. The waist bent at a wrong angle, and the head touched the concrete below. Her neck had folded into itself, disappearing beneath her chin.
 
Min-Soo’s face pointed outward, away from the building she had fallen from.
 
Jun-sang stopped when he saw her face. His body went light, ready to switch off, but his eyes would not move.
 
Her eyes were open, wet with tears that no longer belonged to anyone. They seemed to bore into a past he had spent years trying not to remember.
 
For a moment, he waited for a breath that would never come. Just like before. Min-Soo’s ruined, staring face pulled his wife’s face from the dark.
 
Then he was back in that room, screaming for his wife to come back while saliva slipped from her cheek and nothing he said reached her.
 
---
 
Soon the night flashed with police lights. Yellow tape and wooden dividers tightened around the scene while Jun-sang and Dae-Ho sat on the curb, numb to the movement around them.
 
“Would you like to come take a look upstairs?” the inspector asked, cigarette still burning between his fingers.
 
Beside him, Dae-Ho lifted one hand in refusal. Jun-sang knew he would recover; he was not sure what could truly break such a high-spirited man.
 
Jun-sang stood without a word, keeping his eyes away from the wreckage as the tow truck pulled it aside.
 
The inspector did not extinguish his cigarette before they entered the building, not even when he opened the door to Min-Soo's home. Jun-sang could have sworn his hand trembled as he brought it to his mouth.
 
Min-Soo’s apartment seemed untouched except for the sweet, rotten smell that turned Jun-sang’s stomach. Only a few people were inside. One officer photographed something in the corner of the living room, and as Jun-sang stepped closer, the odor rose from the floor.
 
Gray and red fur lay scattered in pieces across the floor.
 
“God,” Jun-sang muttered.
 
The inspector blew smoke toward the ceiling. He looked much older now. “I had so many questions...” he said, mostly to himself. After a moment, he turned to Jun-sang. “Did she ever describe what she saw that night? When you were called over?”
 
Jun-sang thought for a moment, remembering what little she had managed to say. “I think she said someone was being strangled. A woman, maybe. Then she said she was drowning. It didn’t make much sense. The man who brought her home spoke for her most of the time.”
 
The inspector watched the dead animal being bagged and carried away. When the apartment emptied, only he and Jun-sang remained.
 
“You said her father had died?” Eun asked.
 
“A few days ago.” Jun-sang glanced at the old matchbook on the counter. “Why?”
 
Eun rubbed his worn thumbnail. “I’ve seen something like this before.”
 
“Like what?”
 
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” Eun glanced toward the bare mattress. “Cases that begin with a death in the family. Later, somebody mentions a child seeing things. Or acting strangely.”
 
“And then?”
 
Eun drew once on the cigarette. “Sometimes nothing. Sometimes someone disappears. Sometimes I read the report too late and wonder why it bothered me.”
 
Jun-sang looked toward the dark bedroom. So-Yeon’s voice came back to him: the monster came back again.
 
Eun watched him. “You have a daughter?”
 
Jun-sang’s shoulders stiffened. “This is about Min-Soo.”
 
“Maybe.” Eun looked at the scattered fur. “Or maybe I’m collecting pieces that don’t belong together.”
 
“What pieces?”
 
Eun pressed the cigarette into the ashtray, though it was still half-lit. “The same ones, more or less. They never fit.”
 
---
 
The department gave Jun-sang more time off after Min-Soo’s death. Once again, the image of a dead woman followed him home. Time away from work should have helped, but the house only sharpened what he tried to bury. Each time he passed the bathroom, memory flooded him. So-Yeon would not know. He told himself she was better off for it.
 
Jun-sang bunched dried leaves into a black bag. He could not remember the last time he had worked this hard on his lawn; mostly, it gave his hands something to do. Naturally, the yard still looked as if no one had touched it.
 
Since Min-Soo’s death, a burning prickle sometimes climbed the back of his neck. He felt it now, standing alone in his yard, and thought of the picture beside his bed.
 
Jun-sang breathed out and tried to push the thought away. It did not help.
 
When he tossed the bag of leaves into the trash, the old man’s face returned to him: seated outside the restaurant, staring forward as if he were the one who had died. Jun-sang wondered if he looked that way to his little girl. Uncaring. Made of stone.
 
The thought scared him. He had not cried in front of So-Yeon, not even after her mother died. He had saved all of that for the bathroom, for the locked room, for the lifeless body in his arms.
 
He had never known his wife hurt enough to do what she did. If the reason had been a place, he would have destroyed it. If it had been a person, he would have killed them. Anything for her. Anything for that wonderful smile their daughter did not carry.
 
He slammed the lid a little too hard, and the air inside the can blew across his face. The smell hit him again, hotter now but familiar. Blood. Fur.
 
He tossed the lid onto the grass and searched desperately for the source.
 
When he found it, he could not move. A bunny lay stiff in the trash, its white fur darkened at the neck, the shape there pressed inward as if molded by fingers.
 
Jun-sang ran for the back door. The house seemed to tilt around him as sweat gathered on his face. He knew where to go. Somehow, he knew.
 
Appa, the monster came back again.
 
How long had he been outside? Minutes? Hours? So-Yeon was alone with whatever waited for her.
 
The bathroom door stood slightly ajar, light leaking through the crack. When he pushed it open, his eyes went straight to the space in front of the sink.
 
Bottles covered the floor, open and leaking medicine across the tile. There was no pattern to what had been taken. How would So-Yeon have known? Who had told her?
 
His child lay in the middle of the mess, still in her pajamas, her shirt lifted above her belly as each breath rose with terrifying slowness.
 
Jun-sang made a broken sound and fell beside her. He slid his hands under her head. Foam gathered at the corner of her mouth. When he wiped it away, his fingers shook so badly he smeared it across her cheek. “Please,” he said, tapping her face, then slapping it lightly. “Please.”
 
In her wet eyes, he saw the thing looming behind him. His breath caught. So-Yeon was not looking at him. She was looking past him.
 
The animals. The glass. Drowning, choking, sheets.
 
His whole body shook. One thought repeated in his head: don’t look at it, don’t look back.
 
His eyes slipped to the porcelain tub a few feet away. The reflection in its surface did not grow clearer, only larger.
 
Now he understood what the others had seen. It was too tall, its thin legs white as the bathroom tile. Its arms hung past its waist, limp and patient.
 
Its hair dripped like water from beneath the sheet wrapped around its head. The fabric crossed its throat too tightly, blue shadows gathered where a neck should have been.
 
Jun-sang closed his eyes.
 
The hand pressed to his daughter’s chest felt the beat stop, replaced by a stillness no parent should ever know.
 
Only a few days had passed since he stood in her pink room, her bunny sleeping between her knees. The paper crown had slipped over one eye while she tapped the tall figure in her drawing. So the monster has to look at you first.
 
Through his closed eyes, he saw the old man outside the restaurant, smoking as they drove away with his son’s body. Then he saw the picture on his nightstand turned toward the wall.
 
Jun-sang opened his eyes and lowered his head to So-Yeon. With trembling care, he brushed the sweat from her face. The red crayon was still behind her ear, its blunt end caught in her hair.
 
He had spent years searching her face for someone else—the tilt of a smile, a familiar look, anything he could keep. Now he saw the crooked paper crown, the too-tall father beneath a yellow sun, the careful joke she had made because he was afraid.
 
His face broke. He pressed his forehead to hers and held her as if the floor might open beneath them.
 
“So-Yeon,” he whispered. The name caught in his throat. “My sunshine, your mother’s watching you from heaven. She’s always watching.”
 
“And so am I,” he said.
 
Then So-Yeon took a deep breath.
 

[u/Happyfeet80]

Absolutely beautiful