Youngjae leaves school late that night. “Ugh Mr. Bang, always making me stay after,” he mumbles to himself. He exits the school gates and enters the dark streets of the city.

“Why did I have to live so far away too,” he complains even though it's useless.

He weaves his way through the streets slowly. Youngjae wasn't one to move a lot.

*Tap tap*

Footsteps.

Youngjae turns around to see who's there but there's no one. He shrugs it off and continues walking.

However, the footsteps continue.

*Tap tap tap*

Youngjae tries to ignore it but eventually it becomes inevitable. They were all Youngjae can hear. Fear creeped up Youngjae’s back and he begins to walk faster.

Subsequently, the following footsteps became faster too.

Youngjae became terrified. He ran as fast as he could but he could hear the footsteps still following him. Every corner that he turned, the footsteps followed.

Youngjae looked for an escape outlet. But there were none. The streets were dark and empty. There was no one.

Youngjae felt helpless. “Is this how I’m gonna die?” he thought. But he doesn’t give up. He continues running until he reaches his house and slams on the doorbell.

“Mom!” He screams.

His mother quickly opens the door. “Youngjae! Are you alright?” Youngjae runs into her arms in tears.

“What happened?” she asks but Youngjae was in too much emotional distress to answer.

Youngjae’s mother decides that she’ll let him calm down first. She slowly walks him into the house.

Before the front door closes, Youngjae turns around to see if whatever followed him home was still there but all he saw was darkness.

~~

After that night’s incident, Youngjae always tried his best to leave school early and never walk alone in the dark. Whenever he was called to stay after school late he always called one of his family members to pick him up. Eventually he forgets about it.  

A few months later, Youngjae is once again picked to stay after school by Mr. Bang.

“Youngjae can you stay after a bit?” The teacher asks him.

“No Mr. Bang I actually have a thing to go to.”

“Hmmm a thing… Well it’ll only take a minute. Hurry and you can get to this so called ‘thing.’” Youngjae is led to the storage room by Mr. Bang. “Help me carry these books to my office,” Mr. Bang instructs.

They’re done after a couple of trips.

“Good job Youngjae. You may head home now. Do you need a ride? It’s really dark out there,” Mr. Bang asks.

“No thanks my house is pretty close,” Youngjae lies, there’s no way he was spending anymore time with anything that involved school. He runs out of the classroom as quickly as he could, completing about the terror that he faced just a couple months ago.

“This feels familiar…” Youngjae thinks as he leaves the school. A light breeze hits his face.

A sound in the bushes startles him. “Stupid bush,” he thought. “Must be the breeze.” But that doesn’t stop him from walking faster. He runs to the school gates which seems like miles away.

A tree branch snaps which sends Youngjae running. Many strange sounds seemed to follow him. This makes him remember the footsteps from a couple months ago.

Once he’s out of the school gates he sees Mr. Bang’s car. He quickly runs over and jumps in the car.

“Oh my gosh Mr. Bang, I am so glad you’re here,” Youngjae says.

“I told you it was dark. There are many dangers in the night Youngjae, don’t forget that,” Mr. Bang says before he drives off to Youngjae’s house.

Once they get there Youngjae exits the car. “Thanks Mr. Bang,” he says. “Seeya in class tomorrow.”

“Seeya Youngjae,” Mr. Bang waits for Youngjae to enter his house before driving off.

Youngjae is still shook by what happened but he’s glad that there’s people like Mr. Bang there to help when he needs it. He debates whether or not he should report these incidents to the police but decides that it’s really all in his head.

The next day Youngjae walks to school as usual. Everything was normal for him. He left the house at 7 as always, walked the usual path, and arrived at school around the same time.

He got to school and sat down in his spot, waiting for the bell to ring and Mr. Bang to come in. However, the principal makes an appearance instead.

“Hello class, we have some unfortunate news,” he starts out. Fierce whispers can be heard from around the class.

“Your homeroom teacher, Mr. Bang, has been rushed to the hospital this morning after getting into an accident on the way to school. The driver of the car that hit him had ran off so the police are on the lookout for him. Mr. Bang is in critical condition at the hospital and will not be returning to his teaching job for most likely the rest of the school year,” the principal continued. “Mrs. Han will be your substitute until we figure out what we will do about the situation.”

The class groaned. Not Mrs. Han. The strictest teacher at school. She fooled everyone into thinking she was a cool teacher with her youthful age and chic fashion style but by the second week of school everyone knew that was not the case.

Youngjae wasn’t worried about her though. He was more concerned with Mr. Bang. “Who would do such a thing to him?” Youngjae thought.

~~

That weekend Youngjae went to a coffee shop to meet his friend Himchan. He got there a bit late, knowing how Himchan was, but still ended up waiting for the older boy.

“Hey man,” his friend Himchan said after finally showing up.

“Always late huh?”

“Always,” Himchan laughs and they enter the shop. They ordered drinks before sitting down.

The two catched up a bit because it was the first time they’ve seen each other in a while. Himchan was a couple years older and in college so he was busy majority of the time. The conversation was pretty casual.

After what seemed like forever, the drinks came out. Youngjae, being the younger out of the two, was forced to go grab the drinks. On the way, he bumps into a boy in all black clothing. “He has pretty eyes,” Youngjae thought. “Sorry!” he says quickly before grabbing the drinks and heading back to Himchan. He’s secretly glad that he bumped into the boy before he got the drinks because that would have been a mess.

He sits down before giving Himchan his drink. He also sees the boy sitting at a table across from theirs.

Youngjae and Himchan continue talking normally but whenever Youngjae looked up he would see the boy looking at him. “Hmmm… weird,” Youngjae thought but shrugs it off and continues talking to Himchan.

After an hour, Himchan had to head home to finish homework. “Nice catching up with you Jae. I wish we saw each other more though.”

“Don’t worry hyung. I’ll be in college soon and then we’ll see each other everyday.”

“It’s gonna be fun annoying you everyday then.”

“Shut up,” Youngjae laughs and Himchan leaves.

Youngjae stays at the shop for a bit to do some reading. Before he knew it, it was already dark. He feels a hand on his shoulder. It was one of the workers. “Sorry sir we close in about ten minutes,” she says. Youngjae looks around and sees that there is only one other customer left in the shop. The boy, who was staring at him when he looked around.

Creeped out, Youngjae leaves right away.

The boy leaves as well and Youngjae half expects the boy to follow him but when he turned around, the boy was nowhere to be seen.

The next morning Youngjae receives a call from Himchan’s mother.

“Youngjae-ah, you’