White Flower
In the ordinary classroom, the professor’s calm, measured voice carried like a gentle echo. Here and there, students had already slipped into sleep. Even so, the professor never called them out, simply continuing the lecture in quiet diligence. Most of us were the kind who had drifted into university without much thought—average grades, average school lives. I was a little different. I had some interest in this field. Unlike the outgoing kids who loved soccer or hide-and-seek, I was the introverted type who preferred reading books, listening to music, or drawing.
I had plenty of things I enjoyed, yet strangely, nothing I truly wanted to pursue. After some hesitation, I chose the design department at a university that wasn’t quite prestigious enough to be called elite, nor shabby enough to be dismissed as a safety school. As a freshman who had only just enrolled, orientation events felt awkward, so I skipped them. I didn’t know a single face in the lecture hall.
……
Was this what I had wanted? What had I even wanted in the first place? A hollow feeling gnawed at me. I had lived without any real lacks—or so I had believed. I twirled my pen and stared out the window.
Both my mother and father were good people. We weren’t poor; if anything, I had grown up in a rather comfortable household. My friends back in school had all been decent too. But here, at a university far from home, I was alone. With no one around who knew me, I was left with nothing but time to think about myself.
The professor kept speaking passionately while the students listened, scribbled notes, or slept. Inside this mechanical routine that turned like perfectly meshed gears, a strange noise rang in my ears. I clutched my head. The silence this place created—I hated it.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I shoved my books into my bag and left the classroom. The professor didn’t call me back. Maybe he didn’t even notice. I walked out and headed toward the studio apartment I had rented near campus. It was close enough to reach on foot.
I had saved up from part-time jobs after the college entrance exam, and my parents had chipped in a little, so I managed to find a place within reasonable distance of school.
“…My head hurts.”
An inexplicable headache throbbed at my left temple. This hollow sensation I couldn’t even name—was it because I wasn’t adjusting to university life?
“Maybe I should see a psychiatrist…”
Sudden mental illness. These days, every young person seemed to carry one. I had heard that visiting a mental health clinic wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Still, struggling to adapt right after starting school… and as a brand-new freshman at that. Anger at my own weakness surged, and I scratched my scalp so hard it felt like my hair might fall out.
That was when a single petal brushed across the back of my hand. I lifted my head toward the sky. A white petal, like a cherry blossom, drifted down right in front of my eyes. Was it already cherry blossom season? It was still March, and the weather remained chilly.
But something felt wrong.
A sense of unease made me stare upward. The hand that had been scratching my head froze. I gazed blankly at the flowers. It wasn’t the fact that cherry blossoms were blooming at the end of March that felt strange. It was—
“…What the hell.”
The sheer, impossible quantity of them. Were they even cherry blossoms? Countless white petals swirled down like a blizzard. Where could this many petals have come from all at once? They didn’t just bleach my vision white—they had already turned the entire path into a pure white flower road.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the floral snow stopped. I was confused for a moment, but soon regained my composure. Maybe a truck carrying flowers somewhere had gotten into an accident. I tried to take another step.
What happened next in front of my eyes was unmistakably beyond common sense.
“What~ It’s already over.”
“Yeah, too bad. I wanted to take pictures.”
The area grew noisy. People who had been outside, students poking their heads out of classroom windows to look at the sky, and the couple behind me letting out disappointed sighs.
“Still, babe, look. The path is completely covered in flowers. It’s pretty. Want to take a photo?”
“........”
“…Chae-yun?”
“........”
The man playfully held up his phone toward his girlfriend, but she simply stared into empty space without answering.
“…You’re right. Should we take some?”
Soon the couple moved away from me, laughing warmly again. To anyone else it would have looked normal. But I had been standing close enough to see what only I noticed.
From the petal that had landed on her shoulder, something emerged and slid like liquid into the girl’s ear. The distance and its tiny size kept me from seeing it clearly, but I hadn’t imagined it. After it entered her, her expression twitched and crumpled. It passed through clear pain, became blank, then returned to normal as if nothing had happened.
My body locked up. I barely managed to lower my gaze to the thick carpet of petals covering the ground. Were all of these the same as that thing…?
My entire body refused to move. I forced my frozen legs to take one step. Then the other leg followed. Once both legs obeyed, I reached my studio apartment at a speed I couldn’t even register. My whole body was drenched in sweat. My lungs screamed for oxygen, my heart hammered without rest to meet the body’s desperate demands.
I had pushed myself to the limit. My creaking joints carried me forward as I brushed off every petal clinging to me.
“Ugh! Bleeegh!!”
Whether from released tension or the sudden overexertion, I collapsed on the spot and vomited. The world spun. Should I report this? Would anyone even believe me? What should I do? How… how…
“Aaaargh!!”
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the floor of my room. I checked my phone. It was five in the morning. Had I really passed out right there?
Grabbing my dizzy head, I rose out of habit and fiddled with my phone. My body reeked of sweat like rotting corpses, mixed with the sour stench of vomit I had spilled across the floor. I decided to start by cleaning.
After tidying the living room, I washed myself thoroughly, then threw my body onto the bed and stared at the ceiling light. I turned on the phone beside my pillow and searched.
Cherry blossoms. White flowers. Cherry blossom bugs. Slime creatures.
Of course, nothing useful came up.
“Of course there wouldn’t be…”
I collapsed back onto the bed and let out a long sigh. That was when the phone in my hand vibrated. A text at this hour? Who could it be? It was an unknown number—one I had never seen before.
After starting university, my friends had stopped contacting me much, and my family would never text at dawn. Receiving a message at this time was unusual, and my gut feeling was bad. Maybe it was because of what I had witnessed during the day. Everything felt suspicious.
I cautiously opened the message.
…What?
The writing was awkward and clumsy. It didn’t feel like simple typos—the phrasing itself was unnatural.
I sent a reply immediately: Who is this?
There was no response for a long time. Three minutes passed. Five. Then the reply arrived.
From the very first exchange, I had felt a sense of wrongness. Yes, that same unease. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was different, but the tone didn’t match how a normal ‘person’ would speak.
Who are you? I pressed again, my message turning sharper than I intended.
I already knew the answer, yet I kept asking. After witnessing that scene during the day, I had a rough idea what this thing was. It was probably some entity using Lee Chae-yun’s body as a shell. The fact that it was calmly stating its host’s name sent chills across my skin.
Why should I trust you enough to meet?
This was insane. How the hell did it know my name?
How did you know my name?
I was losing my mind. I had wished for some change in my daily life, but I never imagined it would come in the form of contact from a monster whose true nature I couldn’t even guess. My head went completely blank. The headache that had been building since afternoon crashed over me like a wave.
…Let’s meet tomorrow.
No matter how much I thought about it, that was the only answer. If this turned out to be some hidden camera prank, then fine. What I saw during the day—please let it have been a mistake. I prayed to a god I didn’t even believe in, to every deity I could think of.
But if it really was a monster… I went to the kitchen, took out a kitchen knife, and wrapped it thoroughly in newspaper. While I was preparing, another reply finally arrived after a long delay. I picked up the phone and checked it.
Damn it. The meeting was set. A lunch date with a girl who already had a boyfriend. At this point, I almost wished that was all it was.