Who Is the Real One?
“Which one of us is real?”
Lee Do glanced back and forth between the front door and the bedroom door, his senses on high alert. Beside him, the informant shrank back into the shadows of the living room.
Rattle.
Then once more, sharper this time. The bedroom door didn't budge.
“Did you lock it?” Lee Do asked under his breath.
“No,” the informant whispered, his voice trembling. “The bedroom door doesn't even have a lock.”
Rattle. Clack.
The handle slowly twisted up and down as if testing the latch. Beneath the gap at the bottom of the door, the glow of red digital numbers leaked out across the floorboards.
24
The floor indicator remained frozen on that impossible number.
Suddenly, from the corridor on the other side of the front door came a violent pounding. Thud! Thud!
“Hey! Anyone in there!”
It was the informant's voice—coming from outside.
“Please, open the door!”
Inside, the bedroom doorknob continued to twist and clatter. Outside, someone was hammering frantically against the steel front entrance. Lee Do stood pinned squarely between the two.
“Ah, damn it,” he muttered, a dull ache throbbing behind his temples. “Why the hell are both sides kicking up a fuss at the exact same time?”
Lee Do stepped back, putting equal distance between himself and both thresholds.
“I'm not opening either of them.”
The informant beside him nodded vigorously, looking relieved. “Right. Please don't.”
BANG!
The front door shuddered violently on its hinges.
“I know you're in there!”
The informant flinched, his shoulders pulling tight. Outside, the voice grew shrill with desperation.
“Hey!” Thud! “Who is that person?!”
Lee Do's eyes flicked to the side. The informant tried to back even further away from the entryway, but ended up freezing right beside Lee Do's shoulder.
The shout from the corridor echoed through the steel slab again.
“The guy you're with right now!” BANG! “Who the hell is that?!”
“That person...” the informant beside Lee Do whispered, his voice cracking. “Can he see inside my place?”
Lee Do turned his broadcast camera toward the front door. Set into the metal at eye level was a small, circular peephole.
“...I'm just going to check.”
“What?”
“I won't open the door.”
Lee Do took slow, measured steps toward the entryway.
Lee Do leaned in and pressed his eye against the lens of the peephole.
Outside, the hallway's motion-sensor light was blazing yellow. In its center stood a figure. A black hoodie. A disposable mask. The exact same clothes the informant was wearing. The man stood with his chin tucked against his chest.
Then, as if sensing the gaze from the other side, the man outside slowly raised his head.
Lee Do pulled his face back from the door, his breath hitching. He looked at the informant standing right next to him in the entryway, then leaned back in to check the peephole once more.
The eyes. The bridge of the nose. The brows.
“He's identical.”
“...Excuse me?”
“Even your faces are exactly the same.”
The informant's hand instinctively rose to fumble at his mask, trembling.
Knock, knock.
This time, the man outside didn't pound. He knocked softly, almost politely.
“Great Demon King Sejong.”
The muffled voice traveled clearly through the door.
“I'm watching your stream right now.”
Lee Do glanced down at his phone screen.
If the figure outside was genuinely watching the stream, there was an easy way to verify it.
“If you're really watching,” Lee Do called out through the door. The informant beside him flinched, staring at Lee Do in alarm. “Drop a message in the chat right now.”
A heavy silence fell over the hallway. Seconds ticked by. Then, a fresh message scrolled across the screen.
The exact sentence Lee Do had demanded appeared on the screen, and the chat exploded as viewers scrambled to compare the two.
Lee Do slowly turned to inspect the informant standing beside him. The man's complexion had drained completely, turning an ash-gray white.
“...That's not me,” the man stammered.
“Can you type in the chat?” Lee Do asked.
“I told you, my phone isn't getting any service!”
Right. From the moment they met, the man's phone had been entirely cut off from the network.
“Show it to me.”
The man handed his phone over with trembling fingers. The antenna icon was hollow: zero signal bars. Mobile data and Wi-Fi were completely severed.
A voice filtered through the door from outside. “When did you first meet that person?”
Lee Do answered, “On the seventeenth floor.”
“What time?”
“Around eleven-thirty.”
The informant outside hesitated for a beat before shouting back, “I was inside my apartment at that time!”
The informant beside Lee Do immediately snapped, “That's a lie!”
The one in the corridor seemed to have heard him clearly.
“No!” the voice outside screamed, hysterical and raw. “I'm the real one!”
Beside Lee Do, the second man screamed right back, “I'm telling you, I'm the real one!”
Two identical voices, shrieking the same desperate claim from either side of the door. Lee Do pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut against the blooming migraine.
“Both of you shut up for five seconds.”
Miraculously, both fell dead silent at the same instant.
Lee Do raised his voice so both men could hear him clearly. “We just need to verify details.”
He had only met the informant in person a short while ago, but they had exchanged several emails prior to the broadcast.
“When did you send the very first email?”
The informant beside him replied, “Yesterday.”
From beyond the door: “Yesterday.”
“What floor was it the first time you experienced it?”
Both answered in unison. “The eighteenth floor.”
“And the second time?”
“The nineteenth floor.”
Identical answers, spoken at the exact same rhythm. Lee Do clicked his tongue in frustration. “Generic facts aren't going to work.”
Lee Do racked his brain. Then, his eyes fell upon the peeled sticker stuck to the front door.
“The Jeju sticker.”
The informant beside him blinked. “What?”
“The souvenir sticker on the front door. Where did you buy it?”
“In Jeju Island,” the man inside answered.
From outside came an immediate, confident retort: “A souvenir shop at Jeju Airport.”
The informant inside instantly shook his head. “It wasn't the airport.”
For the very first time, their answers diverged.
“Where was it, then?” Lee Do asked.
“A boutique gift shop in Aewol.”
From the other side of the door, the outside voice countered aggressively. “That's bullshit. I bought it at the airport!”
Lee Do looked at the informant beside him. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“What about you outside?”
“I'm one hundred percent certain!”
“Do you have travel photos from that trip?” Lee Do asked.
The informant beside him quickly unlocked his phone and opened the gallery. There were photos—stretching back across a multi-day trip. The Jeju coastline. Cafes. Plates of local seafood. And finally, a small, independent gift shop.
The informant tapped open an image. “Here.”
It was a snapshot taken in front of the quaint storefront, dated two years prior. Visible in the corner of the display window was that exact same peeling Jeju sticker.
From beyond the door, the outside informant shouted, “I have photos too!”
“Then send them to my email,” Lee Do said.
A few seconds later, Lee Do's phone buzzed with an incoming email. He opened the attachment. It was a photo taken inside Jeju International Airport, right in front of a bustling souvenir counter. Resting directly on the register was a sheet of the exact same JEJU stickers.
Lee Do let out a long, hollow breath. “You both have photos.”
At that single comment in the chat, Lee Do froze.
Could both of them be real?
The informant beside him noticed his sudden rigidity and asked nervously, “What is it?”
“No, wait...”
Lee Do turned his gaze back toward the bedroom door. Beneath it, the red number still burned in the dark: 24.
The elevator. The shifting floors. The apartment itself. Room 1704 had morphed into Room 1804. Heading down the stairwell only looped him straight back to the seventeenth floor. And now, the same man had split into two distinct entities, each bearing contradictory yet authentic memories.
What if one wasn't a fake?
What if, every time this building ascended another level... another duplicate was spawned?
Right at that moment, the digital number under the bedroom door clicked over.
25
The informant whipped around, his eyes wide. “It went up again.”
Click.
The bedroom door handle twisted again, moving with deliberate force. From outside the front door, the other informant's voice burst out in a sudden panic.
“Great Demon King Sejong!”
“What is it now?!”
“What unit number are you in right now?!”
“1804,” Lee Do answered.
A dead hush fell over the corridor outside.
“Why?” Lee Do pressed. “What does it say?”
“Out here...” The voice on the other side thinned into a terrified tremor. “The plate says 1904.”
Lee Do stared at the steel front door. “What did you say?”
“It just changed right in front of me! It was 1804 just a few seconds ago... but now it says 1904!”
Lee Do stared at the floor beneath the bedroom door. 25. Outside the front door, it was only the nineteenth floor. As the elevator rose, the surrounding space was dragged upward along with it. Yet the number inside the bedroom was climbing at a vastly accelerated pace.
The math made no sense.
Creak.
With a slow, agonizing groan, the bedroom door opened a crack. The informant beside Lee Do scrambled back a full step on pure instinct.
Lee Do backed up two paces. Through the parting seam of the door, there was only darkness. But within that pitch-black interior, a matte-gray metallic surface caught the light.
Glowing crimson: 25.
The red glow from the overhead indicator bled down the metal panels, splashing across the threshold. It wasn't a bedroom at all. Past the door frame stood a set of standard, utilitarian elevator doors, beneath a red digital floor display showing the number 25.
“...This is insane.”
The bedroom was gone. In its place sat an elevator shaft.
Ding.
With a clear electronic chime, the elevator doors slid completely open. The car was empty. And this time, the interior mirror looked entirely normal. Lee Do's reflection was there. The informant's reflection stood beside him. Both reflected accurately in the glass.
“I'm not getting in,” Lee Do said flatly, cutting off the viewers' speculation. “Not a chance in hell.”
Just then, a bloodcurdling shriek pierced through the front door from the hallway outside.
“Aaaaargh!”
BANG!
A heavy body collided hard with the steel door, rattling the frame.
“What's happening out there?!” Lee Do dashed back toward the front entrance.
The voice from the corridor came in gasps, choked with sheer terror. “Down there! Look!”
“What is it?!”
“At the end of the hallway!” He was wheezing, his breath coming in ragged bursts. “There's someone standing there!”
“Who is it?!”
“Me!”
“...What?”
The informant outside was sobbing openly now. “There's another person who looks exactly like me!”
Lee Do kept the door firmly shut, his ear pressed near the seam as he strained to pick up the shuffling footsteps in the corridor.
Right then, inside the open elevator car behind him:
Ding.
The digital indicator flipped.
26
At the exact same instant, the informant standing beside Lee Do stumbled, his knees buckling. Lee Do reached out and caught him by the arm.
“Whoa! What's wrong with you?”
“Wait...” The man clutched his skull with both hands, groaning as if his head were splitting open. “A memory... just now...”
“What?”
“...Another memory just popped into my head.”
“What kind of memory?”
Unable to tear his wild eyes away from the floor, the informant gasped for breath. “I... I've been to the twenty-sixth floor before.”
“You've been standing right here beside me this whole time.”
“I know!” The man violently shook his head, desperately trying to dislodge the thoughts taking root in his mind. “I know that, but I remember it! Clearly!”
“Remember what?”
Every ounce of color vanished from the informant's face, leaving it the shade of curdled milk.
“On the twenty-sixth floor...” He swallowed dryly, his throat clicking. “Great Demon King Sejong... you died.”
Instead of answering, Lee Do slowly turned his head to look at the elevator. The indicator glowed: 26. He panned his camera away from the digital readout and aimed it squarely at the interior mirror.
Inside the mirror stood his reflection, with the informant right beside him. Both figures were there.
Lee Do raised his right hand and touched his throat.
The reflection in the mirror didn't budge.
A second later, the reflection's hand rose—lagging behind in an awkward, delayed jerk—and rested against its neck.
Lee Do lowered his hand to his side. In the mirror, the reflection's hand remained firmly clamped over its own neck.
Lee Do took a single, slow step toward the open elevator doors. “Why the hell are you popping up here?”
The Lee Do in the mirror smiled.
The real Lee Do hadn't moved a single facial muscle. Yet the figure trapped within the glass slowly pulled the corners of its mouth upward into a broad, unnatural grin.
Lee Do froze dead in his tracks. The figure in the mirror parted its lips. No sound emerged from the glass, but the mouth shaped each word with exaggerated, agonizing slowness.
Lee Do read the lips.
Get. In.
The reflection repeated the motion, widening its smile.
Get in. And go down.
Lee Do stared directly into the eyes of his smiling doppelgänger for several long seconds. Having reached his conclusion, he scoffed and shook his head.
“No thanks.”
The smile in the mirror vanished instantly.
“Ride it yourself, asshole.”
Lee Do backed away as the mechanical doors began to glide shut.
“I'm not getting on.”
The elevator doors slid together at a crawling pace. The Lee Do in the mirror stood motionless, staring out from the depths of the car as the gap narrowed. Just before the metal panels sealed completely, his reflection moved its lips one final time.
Then go up.
SLAM!
The elevator doors banged shut with a deafening crash.
Ding.
The indicator flared: 27.
And then—BOOM!
The entire apartment violently bucked upward.
“Whoa!”
Lee Do slammed a hand against the wall to steady himself as the informant tumbled hard across the floorboards. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling fixtures. BOOM! A second colossal jolt rattled the concrete foundations, and the entire unit began ascending smoothly through the dark, as if the apartment itself had been loaded into a colossal freight elevator.
Out in the hallway, multiple screams erupted at once.
“Help me!”
It was the informant outside the front door. And then, another voice chimed in—identical in pitch, tone, and panic.
“Help me!”
And yet another.
“Please, help me!”
Three voices. Four voices. From every corner of the external corridor, the exact same voice wailed in terror.
Lee Do gripped his phone so hard his knuckles turned white. The bedroom indicator climbed rapidly:
27
28
29
The numbers blurred past. Lee Do glanced back at the chat.
Lee Do spun toward the living room window. The curtains were drawn back. Outside was supposed to be the nighttime panorama of the apartment complex below. But something was terribly wrong.
There were no streetlamps. No lights from other buildings. No traffic. Just moments ago, the ground-level courtyard had been visible beneath them. Now, there was only pitch-black, suffocating nothingness.
Lee Do slowly walked toward the glass.
“What is this...”
Reflected on the dark surface of the windowpane were Lee Do and the informant. And behind them—
Dozens of people.
Every single one wore the same black hoodie. Every single one had the same mask, the same eyes, the same build. All of them were the informant.
Lee Do turned around slowly. In the living room, there was only one informant cowering on the floor. He snapped his head back toward the glass.
Dozens. Outside the window.
The informant standing at the very front of the crowd slowly raised a hand. And from the opposite side of the glass, high in the empty air—
Tap, tap.
He knocked on the window.
Lee Do's feet felt rooted to the floorboards. Only minutes ago, this apartment had been on the seventeenth floor. There was no balcony, no fire escape, no ledge to stand on outside this glass. There was only empty space.
As the second knock faded, all dozens of the informants outside parted their lips simultaneously. Through the double-paned glass, not a whisper of sound leaked through. Yet the shape of their lips was perfectly synchronized.
Please. Open. The door.
Beside Lee Do, the informant on the floor whispered faintly, “...Those people.”
“What about them?”
“I remember.”
Lee Do's gaze snapped down to the man. “Again?”
The informant stared up at the glass, his eyes vacant. “Yes.”
“What do you remember this time?”
The man's lips trembled violently. “All of them... All of them are me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
The man slowly lifted his head, locking eyes with Lee Do.
“Every time...” He swallowed, gesturing weakly toward the faces pressed against the dark glass. “Every single time the floor went up... On the eighteenth floor... On the nineteenth floor... On the twentieth floor...”
A ragged sob tore from the man's chest.
“And every single time... I sent an email to Great Demon King Sejong.”
Lee Do stared at him, the horrifying weight of the words sinking into his chest. As if cementing the memories slotting into his mind, the man spoke again, his voice barely audible over the hum of the ascending building.
“This isn't the first time.”
Ding.
From the void where the bedroom had once been, the elevator's electronic chime rang out once more.
The indicator flared red.
30
The informant slowly turned his head away from the glowing numbers, his gaze fixing upon Lee Do with terrifying clarity.
“We...” he whispered, his voice trembling down to the marrow. “...have met before.”