This is a story that began with a white room, oblique picture frames, a single summer, and a ghost without a name.

I turned, prepared to leave the room back where I’d entered from, but stopped the second I noticed movement from the side of my eye. I turned back curiously; unsure whether or not my vision was playing tricks with me; and stared intently at the bed, taking in every pleat of the white sheets and every crinkle in it until I witnessed a corner of the seamless satin slip.

Unconsciously, my lips parted at the unexpected sight. A slender shin exposed itself; Hayoung’s skin practically gleaming under the glow of the invading moonlight. I stared at the appendage with frightening attentiveness: how her small, surprisingly stubby toes as opposed to her spider leg fingers curled into her bowed feet with painstaking deliberation. The rest of her form took on the image of a snow-buried relic; her body veiled by a large sheet that rarely shifted, and I could only imagine it was because she was asleep.

I approached the foot of the bed tentatively. My eyes were trained on her sleeping form and did not leave her – despite the fluttering of my lashes and uneasy streaks in my vision – even as I occupied the empty half of it. Carefully, I treaded over the sheets.

I could feel something inside the bloated balloon in my mind swirl and thump like a restless animal upon doing so. I didn’t want to wake her. And yet at the same time, I couldn’t understand why this troubled me so. I was just so compelled to do what I did next that I felt a spectrum of things I could barely fathom, but alas, simply could not care to.

I tucked my knees behind me, clasped my wrist with my left hand, cautiously put my head on the empty pillow beside hers, and laid down, watching her. I wasn’t as surprised as I ought to have been when Hayoung’s eyes suddenly opened. She stirred, slowly cracked open her eyelids, stared vaguely at my chin; I was certain; and remained that way for far too long a time to keep track of. She certainly couldn’t see me; that much, I was certain of.

Yet there were moments when I felt she could. 

"You held the world

"But who is holding you?"

- Petroglyphs

Soundtrack:

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Your Guardian Angel

Whoo - Ice

Porcupine Tree - Lazarus

Killswitch Engage - Always

Hiroyuki Sawano - From Sunset to Sunrise

Petroglyphs - Perception

Bangtan Sonyeondan - Butterfly (Prologue ver.)