A Mother's Voice
Far off, from the end of the hallway, came the sound of an argument.
Holding my breath, I slowly crept toward the noise.
Unit 1201, and Unit 1301 directly above it.
It seemed to be a conflict brewing between the two households.
"Look, I told you, my kids are already asleep! Why do you keep insisting it's our place?!"
A young woman's agitated voice rang out, followed by:
"Don't lie to me! I just heard a kid running around on your ceiling a second ago! Are you going to apologize or what?!"
The furious voice of a middle-aged man, presumably from Unit 1201, shot back.
It sounded like they were arguing over speakerphone.
This is it...
The very epicenter where the curse's nourishment and clues were seething.
I hid behind a fire hydrant in the corner of the hallway.
Then, I relayed the situation to Minhae through the in-ear monitor in my ear.
Just as the argument between the upstairs and downstairs neighbors reached a fever pitch—
Knock. Knock.
Someone knocked on the front door of Unit 1201.
I peeked my head out.
Instantly,
All sound ceased. The upstairs woman's protests, the downstairs man's shouting—everything stopped.
Only the rhythmic knocking echoed down the hallway.
It's started. Hide-and-seek.
Click.
The front door of Unit 1201 slowly swung open.
A middle-aged man, his face flushed red with anger, looked out into the hallway.
"Who is it?!"
But there was no one in the hallway. The man looked around, a bewildered expression crossing his face.
In that moment,
"Mister..."
A young girl's voice, incredibly clear and pitiful, drifted through the air.
"Do you want to play hide-and-seek with me?"
The anger drained from the man's face.
"Heh... hehe..."
His eyes slowly lost focus.
As if possessed, he took a step out of his apartment. He looked completely hypnotized.
Seyeon's urgent voice burst through the earpiece.
The name of the child in the scenario I wrote was Kim Haneul.
I bolted from behind the fire hydrant and blocked the man's path.
"Snap out of it!"
The man flinched at my sudden appearance.
I leaned in close to his ear and shouted the child's name.
"That child is Kim Haneul! She's not your daughter!"
Kim Haneul.
The true name of the child who was the core of the curse.
The man's pupils dilated wildly.
At that moment, the child's voice echoed again from the darkness at the end of the hallway.
But this time, something was different.
"Don't get in my way."
The voice was dripping with pure malice.
Instantly, every light in the hallway shattered and died.
Pitch-black darkness.
Only the eerie green glow of the emergency exit sign illuminated the corridor.
Screeech.
As if on cue, the front doors of every apartment lining both sides of the hallway began to open in unison.
"!!!!!!!!!!"
From within, people began to crawl out.
They looked as though they had already fallen victim to the "hide-and-seek" game.
They slowly began to close in on the middle-aged man and me.
"Damn it..."
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the largest, heaviest iron crowbar I had bought from the hardware store.
A good old-fashioned crowbar.
I continued speaking into the earpiece.
I glared at the wall in front of me. The spot where the child's crying felt the strongest.
The moment the words left my mouth, a piercing shriek erupted from the darkness at the end of the hallway.
"NOOOOOOOOO!!!"
It wasn't just a child's voice anymore, but a grotesque amalgamation of dozens of voices tangled together.
It felt like the desperate struggle of a vengeful spirit whose true form was on the verge of being exposed.
Along with the scream, the movements of the residents closing in on me turned frantic.
They began crawling on all fours, their joints contorting grotesquely as they charged like rabid beasts. The sound of fingernails scraping against the hallway floor and walls echoed from all directions.
"Ugh!"
The middle-aged man beside me collapsed to the floor in terror. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back up.
"If you don't want to die here, pull yourself together!"
I shoved the man back and swung my crowbar at the head of the first victim to lung at me.
Thwack!
With a dull thud, the victim was knocked backward. However, they seemed to feel no pain.
After stumbling for a moment, they got right back up and crawled toward me again. They were no different from living corpses—zombies.
Minhae's frantic shout came through the earpiece.
Thirty seconds.
A short span of time, yet it felt like an eternity.
Victims swarmed me from all sides.
I swung the iron pipe I had brought from the hardware store like a madman to keep them at bay. I swung until my arms felt like they would shatter, kicked them away, and shoved them back with my body. But they kept coming. They crawled out of the darkness endlessly.
One of them lunged and latched onto my leg.
Another scaled the wall and crawled onto the ceiling, preparing to drop on me like a spider.
They're... they're not human anymore...
Illuminated by the green glow of the exit sign, their hollow eyes seemed to contain nothing but the vengeful spirit's command to seize me.
Pant... pant...
My breath caught in my throat.
Just as my arms began to grow numb—
The thing clinging to the ceiling dropped straight toward my head.
It was like watching a giant cockroach fall from above. An unavoidable, sickening horror.
Seyeon's sharp cry pierced through my earpiece.
I spun around with all my might and slammed the crowbar into the left wall Seyeon had indicated.
Crash!
A deafening boom reverberated through the entire hallway.
The old drywall shattered, revealing the concrete wall behind it.
In that instant,
Screeech!
Groan...
Every single resident rushing toward me froze in their tracks.
"Haa... haa..."
Panting heavily, I repeatedly struck the same spot on the wall.
Once, twice, three times.
The solid concrete cracked, revealing a hollow space inside.
This is...
A foul, putrid stench billowed out from the pitch-black darkness.
Mom... I'm here...
I'm scared... It's dark...
I'm hungry... Someone get me out...
Help me...
The child's voice whispered from within the wall.
"It's okay."
As I spoke softly, a shape like black smoke lunged toward me.
What is this?
Was it the vengeful spirit's final struggle?
Ugh...
My throat tightened.
Just then, the chime of the elevator echoed.
With a soft ding, the elevator doors slid open.
Simultaneously, a woman's desperate, tearful cry filled the hallway.
"Haneul! My Haneul!"
It was the actress Deokhu had brought to play Haneul's mother. She flinched for a moment at the hellish scene before her, but having been instructed by Deokhu beforehand, she began to scream with all her might.
"My baby! Sweetheart!!! Haneul!"
A mother's voice.
The single sound the vengeful spirit had yearned for above all else.
The resolution to the curse I had written.
The black smoke stopped dead in midair, halting its assault on me.
Then, slowly, very slowly, it turned toward the mother.
Now.
I pulled the most powerful portable LED lantern I had bought from the hardware store out of my backpack.
"Now, ma'am! Call out her name even louder!"
I clicked the switch on the lantern.
A powerful beam of light pierced through the darkness inside the wall.
"Haneul! Kim Haneul! Mom is here, sweetheart!"
The mother's desperate cry and the artificial light.
Finally, the darkness that had imprisoned the child for years shattered.
Inside the wall, the black smoke dissipated, revealing the tiny figure of a young girl. Shielding her eyes from the blinding light with her arm, she turned her gaze toward the voice calling her name.
And there, she saw her mother.
The child offered a faint smile.
Then, she dissolved into the light, fading away.
It's over... Just as I wrote, I broke the wall, let the light in, and let her hear her mother's voice... It's over.
The victims who had filled the hallway collapsed to the floor like discarded mannequins. The foul stench and the murderous intent vanished completely.
My legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor.
It was the moment the credits rolled on yet another horrific film.
That's another one resolved. But... so many people got hurt...
It was then.
Thud.
Huh...?
In an instant, everything plunged into darkness.
"What the...?"
When I opened my eyes, I was in a familiar place—the audio-visual room where I had pitched my graduation project.
There were no audience seats, no screen—only the judges' table sitting isolated on the stage. And sitting there was an indistinguishable black shadow.
It was the Judge, the very same one from my first dream.
"Impressive."
The shadow spoke, and I couldn't hide my bewilderment.
"You... No, you bastard!!!"
I wanted to charge at him and cave his skull in with my crowbar, but my body wouldn't budge an inch.
Is this a dream?
It had that distinct feeling of trying to throw a punch in a dream, only for your arms to move like lead.
The Judge chuckled and continued.
"Yes, you resolved it safely. You completed the story in your own way. It was an imperfect method, but I caught a glimpse of potential. Quite remarkable."
I bit my lip hard.
He kept talking.
"But you cannot keep reacting in such a makeshift manner forever. At this rate, you will eventually lose your life, and the world will perish. You must be aware of this, yes?"
The shadow slowly stood up.
"From now on, the official evaluation begins."
"...The official evaluation?"
"Indeed. From now on, you will prove your failed works one by one, every week. Starting with the ones you deemed the most worthless—sorted by their lowest ratings."
"What? I'm already doing that shit—"
His voice echoed in my head like a system message.
• Every Monday at midnight, a new assignment will begin.
• Location: Reality
• Time Limit: One Week
• Objective: Fulfill your authority as a writer and your responsibility as a director.
"What kind of bullshit is that?"
The shadow took a step closer to me.
Ugh...
His eyes flashed.
"The first official assignment will begin seventy-two hours from now. I shall grant you time to prepare. I look forward to it, Director Kim Minjun."
With those final words, he dissolved into the darkness like dry ice.
The moment he vanished, the scenery of the audio-visual room shattered like glass.
"Gah!!"
I gasped, snapping my head up.
Sizzle.
Right in front of my nose, the sound of pork belly sizzling filled the air. The boisterous laughter of people, the aroma of grilled meat, and a hand gently tapping my cheek.
"Sunbae! Are you asleep? You can't sleep here!"
Minhae was looking down at me with a worried expression. I blankly looked around. Deokhu was popping the last piece of meat into his mouth, and Seyeon was wiping her hands with a wet wipe.
We were at the samgyeopsal restaurant.
The exact spot where we had been having our team dinner.
I had merely been dozing off.
Was it a dream? No, was it Full Synchronization?
What about that meeting with the Judge just now?
And the desperate struggle in the scenario?
"Wait, ah... my head..."
I clutched my head.
Just then, the screen of my smartphone lying on the table lit up on its own.
There was no notification or message.
Instead, a single line of white text appeared on the black screen.
Like a subtitle teasing the next scene of a movie.
[Fifth Assignment: ]
[Time Remaining: 71:59:48]