The sound of the phone screen cracking echoed sharply through the cramped room.
Glen stood frozen, staring at his phone lying on the ceramic floor. Light from the screen, shattered into a thousand pieces, still glowed faintly, displaying a frozen video frame that stopped precisely on the apparition of that fanged shadow.
Glen's knees felt boneless. He slowly knelt down and snatched up his phone with hands that trembled so violently his glasses nearly slid off the bridge of his nose.
(The evidence was real.)
This wasn't just a hallucination caused by sleep deprivation. His phone's camera—a lifeless object with no thoughts or imagination—had captured the anomaly's movements. His own shadow had rebelled, moving independently while his brain sank into microsleep.
Click.
Glen forcibly turned off his phone's screen, unable to look at the fanged silhouette's face any longer. The damp, earthy smell in his room seemed to grow heavier, creeping slowly through the air as though it were trapping every inch of oxygen he breathed.
I have to get out of this room, Glen thought in a panic.
He couldn't stay here alone anymore. This boarding room, which was usually his comfort zone for creating, now felt like a grave ready to swallow him whole.
Glen grabbed his backpack and hurriedly shoved his laptop and graphics tablet inside. He intended to go somewhere crowded—to a 24-hour café near the fine arts campus where students hung out. Under bright lights and amid the din of human voices, maybe the creature wouldn't be able to touch him.
When Glen opened his door and stepped into the second-floor hallway, the boarding house was still completely silent. Dawn had yet to fully break; the sky outside in Sewon was still a deep purplish blue.
But just as Glen had walked a few steps past Room Number 6, his footsteps suddenly stopped dead.
The door to Room Number 6, which had been slightly ajar before, was now shut tight again. The old, rusted padlock still hung from its hasp—as if the door hadn't been touched in years.
Glen swallowed with difficulty. The black ink-stained writing on the wall inside that room, which he had seen only an hour ago... seemed to have been nothing more than an illusion that had changed its shape.
BANG!
Footsteps from the floor below startled Glen.
He reflexively jumped back, bracing himself in a defensive stance. But the person who appeared from around the stairwell was Amelia. She wore sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, carrying a plastic bag filled with several cans of energy drinks and a bottle of eyedrops.
"Glen?" Amelia stopped at the end of the stairs, looking him up and down. "Where are you going this early with a bag?"
"Mel..." Glen's voice was horribly hoarse, almost gone.
Amelia hurried up the remaining steps and went to her friend. When she saw Glen's face up close, her eyes widened in shock.
Glen looked far worse than he had the night before. His eyes were bloodshot, filled with burst blood vessels; his skin was deathly pale; and the three faint scratches on his cheek stood out starkly beneath the hallway light.
"Glen, what happened to your cheek?!" Amelia cried in panic, gripping Glen's trembling shoulder. "Are you hurt? What happened last night?!"
"I... I'm fine, Mel," Glen lied, his lips trembling. "I just... I want to go out for some fresh air. Maybe head to a café."
"Fresh air, my ass!" Amelia snapped, though her eyes couldn't hide her deep concern. "Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror? You look like a walking corpse! You're not going anywhere until you tell me what really happened!"
Amelia forcefully seized Glen by the sleeve of his jacket and dragged him back toward Room Number 3. Glen didn't protest; Amelia's presence and forceful determination were the only bridges connecting him to reality right now.
However, while Amelia was busy turning Glen's doorknob, Glen's eyes flicked toward the reflection of the two of them in the small hanging mirror mounted in the hallway near the stairs.
In the mirror, Amelia's reflection stood normally, with its back to the camera.
But Glen's reflection in the mirror... [Wasn't facing away.]
Within the mirror's reflection, Glen's shadow was instead standing directly facing him, tilting its head at a stiff angle, while its jaw hung wide open, revealing a horrifying grin lined with sharp fangs.