“I’ll check on him,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Leaning against the wall for support, she made her way toward the source of the noise. Her mother stayed by the door, likely waiting for Hyun-woo. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever. With each step, the canned laughter from the TV grew more oppressive, a jarring soundtrack to the growing dread in her heart.

She reached the doorway of the living room. The room was bathed in the erratic, colored light of the television screen. She could make out the shape of the large leather sofa where her brother always sat.

“Oppa?” she said again, her voice swallowed by the noise.

Her hand found the light switch beside the doorframe. She flipped it.

The world froze.

For a horrifying second, her brain refused to process what her eyes were seeing. Kim Min-jun was on the sofa, but he wasn’t sleeping. His body was slumped at an unnatural angle, his head lolled back. And everywhere… everywhere there was blood. A dark, crimson stain bloomed across his chest, soaked into the cream-colored fabric of the sofa, and pooled on the polished wooden floor beside him.

Her eyes, wide with terror, traced the brutal story. A dark, ugly hole just behind his left ear. A second, more devastating wound on the side of his neck. A third, directly over his heart, the fabric around it saturated.

A scream built in her throat, a silent, suffocating pressure. Run to him. Help him. But her legs were made of stone. The room began to tilt, the garish TV lights and the stark overhead light swirling into a nauseating vortex. The metallic smell of blood filled her nostrils, thick and cloying. Her head spun violently, a wave of bile rising in her throat. She stumbled back, one hand flying to her mouth, the other clutching her swollen belly.

Somehow, her body turned, moving on a primal instinct for survival. She staggered back down the hallway, her vision tunneling until all she could see was the worried face of her mother standing by the open door.

Eun-ji’s expression shifted from mild concern to pure alarm. “Soo-jin? What is it? You’re white as a ghost!”

Soo-jin couldn’t form words. Her breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. She grabbed her mother’s arm, her grip desperate and bruising. Her other hand, trembling uncontrollably, rose and pointed a shaking finger back down the hallway, towards the room with the blaring TV and the unspeakable horror within.

A single, choked sound escaped her lips before the world went dark, and her legs gave way beneath her. She crumpled to the floor, the image of her brother’s lifeless body seared onto the back of her eyelids.