Chapter Text
Rural Korea, 1997
Late August.
The cicadas screamed in the trees as the summer heat weighed heavy in the air. Out beyond the rice fields, the gravel road curled around a bend toward the only middle school in the district, where a group of teenagers were lazily piling onto a rattling yellow bus.
Among them were Seonghwa and Jongho.
Seonghwa stood tall for a sixteen-year-old — all quiet eyes and sun-warmed skin, his black T-shirt soaked in sweat after the end-of-camp hike. He carried both his and Jongho’s bags slung over his shoulder, like always.
Jongho, two years younger and half as serious, was trailing behind with his sleeves rolled up and a stubborn cowlick sticking up from his hair. His camp shirt was signed in permanent marker by a dozen classmates, most of whom hadn’t bothered to ask first.
“I’m starving,” Jongho muttered, clambering into the bus seat beside his brother. “Do you think Mom will make rice cakes when we get home?”
Seonghwa glanced out the window, jaw tensing faintly. “Probably not. It’s too hot to cook.”
Jongho pouted. “She always makes rice cakes when we come back.”
Seonghwa didn’t answer. He only watched the passing scenery — rice paddies swaying like green waves, narrow roads that stretched for miles, wooden utility poles that stood crooked and creaking. Something in his stomach sat wrong. It had been sitting wrong since last night.
It wasn’t unusual to be away from home. Their parents didn’t mind the boys being out of the house — if anything, they encouraged it. Sometimes it was easier. Simpler. Especially after—
He cut the thought short.
The bus rumbled forward. No one noticed that the smile on Seonghwa’s face didn’t quite reach his eyes.
By the time they reached the house, the sky was bruised with sunset and the countryside had begun to quiet. It was a one-story home tucked between a field and a dense patch of trees, worn with time, but sturdy. Familiar.
The air smelled different.
No dinner cooking. No laundry hanging on the line. No light in the front window.
Seonghwa slowed.
Jongho almost bumped into him, frowning. “Why’s the gate open?”
It was ajar — slightly, just enough to creak in the wind.
Seonghwa said nothing. He stepped forward, hand brushing Yunho’s chest to keep him behind. His pace was measured. Careful.
“Hyung?” Jongho’s voice cracked slightly. “What’s wrong?”
The door was unlocked.
Inside, the house was dark. Still. The kind of stillness that never should’ve existed in a home.
Seonghwa moved through the front room first, eyes sweeping over everything. Their shoes still by the mat. A glass on the table. The old fan in the corner unplugged. The air was thick — not just with heat, but something heavier. Dense.
And then he smelled it.
Iron. Rot.
Seonghwa’s feet carried him before his mind could catch up — down the narrow hallway, past the bathroom, to the door that led to their parents’ bedroom.
He pushed it open.
The world dropped out.
The first thing he saw was red.
It was everywhere — soaked into the blankets, the sheets, the wallpaper, even the floorboards. The bodies were twisted in the bed, their limbs bent unnaturally, their eyes open but unseeing.
And the smell.
The smell was something he would never forget.
Jongho let out a sound behind him, a broken, breathless sound — before falling back against the wall, shaking violently.
Seonghwa didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
His parents were dead. Long dead. Days.
They were already too late.
The sky had dimmed to an indigo haze by the time the first squad car pulled into the gravel driveway.
Red and blue lights flickered against the quiet walls of the farmhouse. A couple of curious neighbors lingered at the edge of their porches, whispering behind hands, eyes heavy with grim speculation.
Seonghwa sat on the front steps, still in his camp uniform. His shirt was stained at the collar from where Jongho had clung to him and cried. His own hands trembled in his lap, fingers darkened with something he hadn’t dared wash off yet. Jongho was inside the neighbor’s house across the fence — a woman who’d forced them to come sit, to drink water, to breathe.
But Seonghwa hadn’t been able to sit long. He came back out. He needed to see.
Two officers approached. One older, with a thinning hairline and a heavy frown. The other younger, clearly new, notebook already in hand.
“You’re the son?” the older cop asked.
Seonghwa nodded. “We just… got back from camp. They were already…”
His throat closed off again.
The officer didn’t push further. “Alright. Stay here for now. We’re going in.”
They entered with care. Shoes off. Gloves on. The smell hit them immediately.
Inside the small home, the kitchen and living room were streaked with signs of struggle. Overturned chairs. A shattered plate. Blood that had dried into the floorboards.
The older officer motioned for the younger to start photographing.
It didn’t take long to find the father — collapsed near the bed in the bedroom, head tilted at an unnatural angle, blood crusted down his temple. And on the bed itself, the mother. Slumped against the headboard. Her face was bloodied. Her blouse torn at the shoulder.
And in her mouth — partially stuffed, lodged just behind her teeth — was something pale and wrinkled.
“Hold up,” the senior officer muttered.
He crouched, pulling on a second layer of gloves before gently reaching forward.
He pinched the corner of the object and eased it free.
Paper.
It was torn roughly on one side, thin like the kind used in journals. Stained near the edges. Folded once, then again.
He unfolded it carefully.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then he stood, voice low but firm.
“Get forensics in here. Now. And call the chief.”
A line of writing. Black ink. Slanted and sharp.
“It has to end”