A low mechanical whir spreads over the quiet alley.

Among the three parked vehicles, a dish turns slowly on the roof of the city inspection utility van, adjusting its angle toward the goshitel.

Inside the van.

A new item appears on the HUD.

GHOST GATE INITIALIZING
A thin progress bar along the bottom of the screen begins to move.

Beyond the windshield, Seongjoon watches the goshitel entrance.
With his AR glasses on, he continues speaking quietly over comms.

The drone launched from the van holds its position directly above the goshitel.

A moment later, the additional drones arrive.
They spread out at fixed intervals, slowly taking positions over the alley outside the building and the surrounding blocks.
Farther out, several more arrive, looking down over the low buildings of the neighborhood.

From above, the old rooftops and narrow alleys are tangled together like a grid.
At the center of it, the goshitel sits quietly in place.

On the feed from the drone looking down over the goshitel, the van door opens below.
Seongjoon steps out first and walks toward the sliding door on the side of the vehicle.

The side door slides open.
Standing in front of it, Seongjoon adjusts the front of his fluorescent vest once, still wearing his AR glasses.
The fabric, slightly thicker than an ordinary work vest, catches briefly under his fingers.
He slips his right hand inside the vest, touches the area near his chest once, then pulls his hand back out as if nothing happened.

Inside the vehicle, Sanghyun takes a utility belt from the equipment compartment and holds it out to him.
Seongjoon accepts it and fastens it around his waist.
At Sanghyun’s own waist, among the ordinary field tools, a few pieces of unfamiliar equipment sit quietly mixed in.
Sanghyun adjusts their positions once, then prepares to follow Seongjoon out.

Seongjoon turns and starts toward the goshitel.
As he walks, he presses an earpiece into his left ear.

Behind him, Sanghyun steps down from the vehicle with the orange-striped bag in hand and closes the open sliding door.
The low sound of the door closing lingers briefly in the alley.
Sanghyun hurries after him, slipping an earpiece into his own left ear.

As they get closer to the goshitel entrance, the first-floor corridor becomes clearer through the glass door.

Two residents are standing in the hallway outside the office. The building manager faces them, speaking.

Seongjoon reaches the glass door first and pulls it open.
As the door opens, the voices from inside spill out.

The darkness that followed was not quite right.

There is nothing.

As if it is impossible to tell whether one’s eyes are open or closed.

No wall.
No floor.
No ceiling.

Not even the sound of breathing, or fabric brushing against fabric.

The corridor and the people who had been right there a moment ago are cut away, as if sliced clean with a blade.

Only a vast, empty darkness stretches on without end.

In that darkness, there is one point.

A small light, far away.

At first, it is so faint it feels like a trick of the eyes.
So distant it is hard to be sure it is even there.

But if one keeps looking, the point does not vanish.

It flickers.

Very small.
Very fragile.

Like the breath of a star just born.

It seems about to go out, then catches again.
Catches, then thins once more.

In the middle of that endless dark, only that light remains.

And strangely, the gaze cannot move anywhere else.
As if something has been searching for that point.

No.

As if everything else has been erased from the beginning, leaving only that one thing behind.

The light is still far away.
Too far to reach, no matter how far a hand might stretch.
And yet, as the gaze stays on it, it seems to sharpen little by little.

The darkness remains unchanged.
Only that point moves with the faintest sign of life.
A small, lonely light.
As if checking whether it is still breathing, it flickers once more.
Slowly.
Precariously.

The light seems far away.
But the longer it is watched, the closer it becomes.
No.
Not closer.
It feels more like sinking toward it.

The darkness is still endless.
There is no up or down, and yet a faint sensation remains.

A body, descending very slowly toward that single point of light.

As the distance narrows, a faint sound begins to spread around it.

At first, it sounds like wind.
But the more one listens, the more it resembles voices.
Low, blurred whispers.
Words too indistinct to understand.

It is impossible to know whether they are in some unfamiliar language, or whether they can even be called language at all.
Somewhere in the darkness, unseen presences seem to be opening their mouths.

The voices do not stay in one place.
They drift through the dark, seeping between it.

It is a careful sound.
Small as a breath, as if afraid to startle someone who is asleep.

The call is directed toward the point of light.

The light does not respond.

The closer the light comes, the more the voices wandering through the dark begin to swell.
The whispers that had been spreading faintly now press in from every direction at once.

They murmur low.
Tangle together.
Push against one another.
Brush past each other.

As if invisible things are stirring somewhere deep inside the darkness, opening their mouths.

The words cannot be understood.
Not one language.
Not even the same kind of sound.
They pour out in different textures, each one unfamiliar.

They do not seem to listen to one another.
They do not answer one another.
There is no order.
No response.

And still, they never stop.
As if each one is forcing its own meaning, its own reason, all the way to the end.
No one yields.
No one steps back.
As if to be heard.
As if they must be heard.

All those voices press stubbornly toward someone beneath that single point of light.

The closer the light comes, the more the shapes submerged around it begin to show.

The first thing to emerge is the outline of a small boat, resting on darkness that lies still as black water.
A lone fishing boat.
In the middle of a black sea with no visible end, it floats in silence, as if it has lost its way and stopped.

A man stands on it.
He is lean.
His body looks as though it once had strength in it, but now he is dried out, as if he has gone days without a proper mouthful of water or food.

He stands low on the deck.
He looks unsteady, as if he might stagger at any moment.

But the thing in his hand does not slip.
In his right hand, he holds a torch.
An old torch, the kind that belongs in ancient murals or buried relics.
Something utterly out of place here.

The flame burns clearly, with no sign of going out.
And yet the tip of it cannot settle.
It trembles, thin and sensitive.

The wavering firelight licks faintly across the man’s dry knuckles and the deck beneath him, dark and sunken as if wet.

This time, it is a little clearer.
But the man does not respond.

As the view descends to just above him, the man’s face rises faintly out of the dark.

His eyes are closed.
Instead, he stands perfectly still, listening toward one direction in the darkness.
Like someone holding on to one voice among all the tangled others.

His lips move faintly.
Almost no sound escapes, but he keeps muttering something, as if he is speaking with someone.

He looks like a man who cannot hear anyone beside him, even if they call out.
Or like someone who has already gone too far into some deeper place inside himself.

Before long, his muttering blends into the voices in the dark.
It becomes one more voice among them.

Only then do the man’s lips pause.

His closed eyes still do not open, but his head lifts by the slightest degree.
As if his ears respond before the rest of him, he quietly turns his senses toward somewhere in the dark.

But he does not understand it right away.
Among the voices pressing in from every direction, that voice too is only a ripple passing through.

He stands without even breathing, as if trying to hold on to that one sound.

His lips begin to move again.
It looks as though he is answering someone.
Or perhaps only repeating what he hears.

Either way, he already seems too deeply submerged to tell where the outside ends and the inside begins.

This time, the words do not scatter.
They push through the countless voices and finally land as one clear voice.

The man’s rigid mouth twists almost imperceptibly.
A sign that he understands.

But it is not relief.
It is closer to the expression of someone realizing that the thing he has held on to for so long must finally be let go.

Beneath his closed eyes, a deep, quiet disappointment slowly seeps in.

The man slowly lowers his head.

The awareness that had opened toward the child’s voice tilts back toward the darkness.
As if pretending not to hear the call, he quietly turns his ear away.

The torch is still clenched tightly in his right hand.
The tendons on the back of his hand rise thinly under the firelight.

With his eyes closed, he begins feeling his way again through the voices around him.
Like someone who cannot afford to miss even one.
Like someone determined to catch again whatever he almost lost.

The flame trembles thinly.

For a moment, the voice quietly watches the man’s response.
As if it understands.
As if it already knew.
As if this is not the first time.

But there is no more time to stay.

At that moment, the man’s senses are caught by that side again.

His head stops, almost imperceptibly.
The awareness that had been leaning back toward the dark slowly turns toward the voice.

His eyes remain closed.
But he has clearly heard it.

The torch flame trembles thinly.

When those words reach him, the corner of the man’s mouth wavers almost imperceptibly.

The strength that had been holding out inside his hand gives way.
Something he had been gripping on the inside seems to loosen quietly.

The flame quivers uneasily a few more times, then slowly lowers its force.

Then, from far away, another sound begins to seep in.

At first, it sounds like some part of the darkness humming low.

But soon it becomes clear.
It is not wind.
It is the sound of a rough sea.
The sound of waves driving in violently.
The sound of water torn and tangled by wind.
As if the entire sea is boiling in the middle of a storm.

As the sound comes closer, the voices in the dark are the first to shake.
The tangled voices ripple, as if they have flinched.
Then they begin pushing against one another more violently.

As if trying to hold on.
As if trying to turn him back.
As if refusing to let go until the end.

The incomprehensible words can no longer hide their feeling.

Angry voices.
Urgent voices.
Pleading voices.

They mix all at once and churn through the darkness.

As if saying, do not go.
Not yet.
Stay here.

But the storm-like sound of the sea pushes in louder and louder.
It strikes from every direction, as if covering the countless voices, crushing them down one by one.

Then the voices in the dark thrash even more fiercely, as if making their last stand.
Desperation, anger, and pleading tangle into one sound.
Before long, it can no longer be distinguished from the harsh wind, or from the waves overturning.

And the light goes out.

Darkness settles.

At that moment, light surges up from the darkness around the boat.

A single line at first.
Then it splits into several branches.
Like a trunk and limbs growing all at once in a pitch-black void, white strands of light stretch upward in every direction.

The light does not brighten the darkness.
It only draws out the cracks hidden inside it.
Across the black, sealed space, thin fissure lines flash into being.

And in the next instant,
a massive wave comes crashing in.
The storming sea rushes forward as one body, pouring down as if to smash the cracked darkness head-on.
Along the lines the light has drawn, the darkness breaks apart.

Black fragments scatter in every direction.
And with them, the voices caught inside those seams are torn loose, shattering and scattering all at once.
Angry cries, desperate shouts,
the countless voices that had tried to hold on until the end,
are ripped apart and swept into the storm.

At the same time, the sea lifts the boat violently.
The lone fishing boat shoots upward, riding the back of a massive wave to a dizzying height.

Then, just as suddenly,
it folds downward as if overturned
and is swallowed whole beneath the dark blue water.

The man’s body lurches hard as the wave takes him.
But he does not look startled.
There is no fear in him.

What remains on his face is only the deep, heavy disappointment of someone facing the thing he could not hold on to in the end.
That disappointment soon spreads into a sorrow that seems to sink even farther down.
His closed eyes do not react.

And in the next instant,
the great surge of water swallows his body whole.

Beneath the water, it is strangely quiet.

The world that had been roaring only moments ago with waves and wind and breaking sound now seems far away, beyond some thick membrane.

The man’s body floats helplessly in the dark blue water.

No.
Not helplessly.

More like someone who has decided not to resist anymore,
letting the current take him as he sways slowly in place.

From his mouth and the tip of his nose,
the breath he has been holding begins to slip out little by little.
Small bubbles rise past his face,
brushing over his closed eyes.
One after another.

The man remains submerged in the still water,
without the slightest resistance.

A very brief hesitation.

Not out of fear.
Not quite hesitation, either.
It is closer to the final moment of holding himself back,
because the sense of reality worn too deeply into the body still remains there.

In the end, the man breathes in.

Water immediately floods into his lungs.
His body reacts at once.
It twists violently,
as if trying to block it out,
thrashing by instinct.

Before will can move,
the body tries to live first.

His closed eyes are pulled open by that reaction.
But what fills them is not fear.
Only a hollow, deep sorrow.
An old grief,
sunken somewhere lower than the heart.

At the center of his opened eye,
the black pupil spreads deep.

The gaze is pulled into that darkness in an instant.

Pure darkness.
Nothing inside it.

After that brief rupture,
the gaze shoots upward in reverse.

The darkness stretches on like a long, narrow vertical passage.
It feels like being fired straight up through an endless black tunnel,
like a single bullet.

Up.

Higher.

Rising steeply without even a moment to hesitate.

And in the next instant,
the view bursts open.

A massive whale is breaching above the storming black sea.
Its mouth is open wide, as if trying to swallow the sky.

The long, dark vertical space just passed through seems to have been a passage from deep inside that enormous mouth,
from the belly,
up through the throat.

The gaze shoots out from the whale’s open jaws as if spat into the air.
Dark scales of water and white foam explode in every direction.

The whale arches its entire enormous body like a bow as it rises above the black storm sea.
Its open mouth looks as if it has finally thrown up something it had been holding inside for too long.

The gaze does not stop.
It pushes the sea and the whale beneath it
and flies even faster into the depths of the sky.

And in the next instant,
the gaze bends back into a single point
and rushes out from the man’s opened eye.

The black pupil pulls away in an instant,
and the VR goggles covering it come into view.

They are familiar-looking full-dive goggles.
But the audio sections beside the ears have been modified,
wrapping more deeply around the outer ear,
as if to block out sound from the outside.

As the gaze pulls back a little farther,
the man’s whole face comes into view.

His mouth is frozen open.
His breath seems caught somewhere in his throat, unable to enter.

No scream.
No words.
Nothing makes it out.

The veins on his face and neck stand out.
The thick, swollen vessels beneath his skin reveal the inner state of a body crushed under pain and fear.

The status light on the side of the goggles blinks in short, regular intervals.
It looks like an expressionless system signal,
just before the power goes out.

The gaze withdraws more slowly.

The man is lying on a narrow bed pressed against the wall inside a small goshitel room.

He is still dressed to go out in late spring.
A hooded sweater.
Comfortable pants.
Even his sneakers are still on.
As if he could leave for somewhere at any moment.

But his body is in an entirely different state.
The traces of having twisted without breath remain exactly as they were,
his limbs and torso locked in a rigid tension.

Then,
a faint wrongness reveals itself belatedly.

The man’s body is not fully touching the bed.

Only slightly,
by the height of two or three fingers,
he is floating in the air.

As the light on the goggles grows weaker,
the tension holding his body begins to loosen as well.

His stiff limbs sink by the slightest degree,
and the body suspended above the bed slowly lowers a few inches.

As if an invisible hand is carefully letting him go,
he settles softly onto the mattress without a sound.

And at last,
the light on the goggles goes out.

The man lies there without moving.

When the camera stops in place, no longer moving,
he looks like someone whose breath has already stopped.

For a while,
nothing moves.
Only silence lies thinly across the room.

Then,

A long, pressed-down breath
slowly leaks from his mouth.

That single thread of breath spreads through the air that had stopped.

The camera glides very slowly to the side.

The man’s body on the bed drifts little by little out of frame,
and other parts of the room quietly reveal themselves in its place.

It is a windowless goshitel room.
The room is strangely tidy.
So empty and simple that it barely feels lived in.

One narrow bed against the wall.
One small desk and chair.
A small trash bin on the floor to one side.
In the corner is a small refrigerator,
and against the wall, a narrow storage cabinet just large enough to hang a few pieces of clothing.
Only the things that would normally be found in a goshitel room.

There are not many personal belongings in it.

On the desk sits a high-spec desktop tower,
apparently for running VR.
Strangely, there is no monitor.

A thin late-spring jacket hangs neatly over the back of the chair.

Inside the trash bin is a plastic bag tied tightly shut.
It looks like trash from dinner two nights ago,
left there too long,
already separated from the room’s present time.

The camera glides a little farther.

On the floor beside the bed,
close enough to reach with one hand,
lies a phone.
A charging cable is connected to it.

The screen has not gone out.
A timer remains running.

31 hours 44 minutes.

The number does not stop.
It continues to climb slowly.

And with only the faint light of the screen remaining,
the scene slowly sinks into darkness.

Directly above the goshitel,
the drone continues its watch,
silently looking down.

Then,
without any warning,
the lights on its body go out.

A brief stillness.

The drone drops straight down.

It hits the rooftop floor of the goshitel,
scattering a thin layer of dust,
and comes to a stop.