Chapter 1: A Voice Without a Mouth
The world had long stopped wondering what Han Eura's voice sounded like.
It wasn't that people didn't care — they just didn't ask anymore. Her silence had become a fact, like rain in spring or frost on windowpanes. Students whispered her name as if it were a ghost story. Teachers passed her over like an empty chair. And even the stray cats that roamed the alley behind Baekhyun Arts High School learned not to expect a "tsk" or a whisper from her lips.
Seventeen years old. Pale like moonlight. Always in black.
She was not invisible — she was simply... unreachable.
Her silence wasn't a protest. It wasn't a phase.
It was a grave.
Five years ago, Han Eura had stood in the center of a subway platform, holding her brother's hand. A boy with a laugh like wind chimes and a voice so warm it could've melted snow. He had told her not to let go. She hadn't. Not until the crowd pushed. Not until the lights blinked and the train never came.
He vanished that night.
So did her voice.
Now, Eura walked the halls of her school like someone had pressed mute on her life. The other students moved around her — laughing, shouting, tapping phone screens. Eura moved like time didn't apply to her. Her eyes were cold glass. Her black headphones always on, though they played nothing.
"Freak," someone whispered as she passed.
She didn't flinch. She never flinched.
In class, her notebook filled with lines of lyrics — lyrics she never sang. In art, she painted cracked pianos and cities drowning in static. No one knew she submitted digital compositions under the alias Ghostling on forums so hidden even hackers would hesitate to trespass.
Her music wasn't found on Spotify.
It lived in encrypted corners of the internet, where identity meant nothing and emotions meant everything.
Ghostling was legend in those spaces.
No photo. No bio. No trace.
Only music that made people cry without knowing why.
And still, none of them knew:
The composer was a silent high school girl in Seoul, haunted by the lullaby her brother used to hum every night.
---
That evening, the sky turned copper as the sun bled through smog.
Eura stood on the rooftop of her apartment building, her hoodie zipped high, the city spread beneath her like a broken cassette tape.
In her hand: a cracked phone.
In her chest: a song forming.
Her brother's voice, still echoing in memory —
"Don't stop singing, Eura. Even if no one hears you."
She hadn't stopped. Not really.
She just sang where the world couldn't follow.
Her room — dim, quiet, cluttered with audio gear scavenged from junk markets. Her laptop blinked to life.
She opened her mixing software.
Created a new file.
Untitled_27.wav
The melody came first — haunting, slow, notes like water dripping in an abandoned stairwell. A warped piano. A heartbeat drum. Ghost harmonies layered beneath a broken synthesizer.
Then... the chorus.
A phrase she hadn't allowed herself to even hum in years.
The lullaby.
His lullaby.
Her fingers trembled over the keys. But the sound—
it was perfect.
She didn't title the track.
She didn't share it with anyone she knew.
She just uploaded it into an anonymous thread on a dead composer's message board, under a folder labeled "/nobodyknows."
Then she powered down.
And cried into her pillow for the first time in months.
The next morning, her phone wouldn't stop buzzing.
Eura blinked sleep from her eyes, pulling her hoodie over her head before checking the screen. Her heart stuttered.
> 57 unread messages
18 app notifications
3 missed calls (Unknown)
And then the one that froze her fingers.
[AnonymousUser27] replied to your track:
"You remember it too... don't you?"
She sat up.
This wasn't normal.
Her uploads usually got responses from small-time producers, maybe a poet or two who used her samples. Never... this.
She opened her laptop.
The track had been reposted.
By someone else.
Untitled_27_Remix.wav
No description. No tags. But... her file had been edited.
She clicked play.
Static.
The slow heartbeat of her original track.
The faint melody she'd composed the night before.
Then —
A voice.
Her brother's voice.
"Don't be afraid, Eura. Keep singing. I'm still listening."
The air in her lungs evaporated.
She slapped her headphones off, heart crashing against her ribs.
No.
It couldn't be.
It was his voice — exactly as she remembered it. The low warmth. The careful way he said her name. The softness on the 'r'.
But he was gone.
Wasn't he?
She opened the remix in her software. Checked the waveforms. It wasn't AI. No synthetic timbre, no shallow cuts. This was recorded. Real.
Her head spun.
She hadn't heard his voice in five years.
Not since that night.
Not since the train that never came.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
She typed into the forum thread:
> "Where did you get this voice?"
A reply came instantly.
> [AnonymousUser27]:
"I heard it the same way you did. In the silence."
Her blood chilled.
She clicked their profile.
Empty.
No posts. No history.
Just a single phrase on their bio line:
"The song always finds its singer again."
Who were they?
She searched the username. Nothing.
She tried tracing the upload. Blocked.
Even the remix file was now gone. Deleted from the forum.
Only her copy remained.
Her phone buzzed again.
A new message. Unknown number.
> "You're not alone, Eura."
She dropped the device like it burned.
No one knew her name in those forums. She'd never connected it to her real identity.
Unless... someone had been watching all along.
---
That afternoon, school was louder than usual. A student idol from Class 2-B had gone viral for dancing in the cafeteria. Everyone was gathered around phones, laughing.
Eura walked past them, as always, silent.
But something was different.
She felt eyes.
A low hum in her ears, like her body was reacting to something just beyond her senses.
She sat in her usual seat — back corner, window side. The same seat she always took.
But her desk was no longer untouched.
A small paper square sat folded at the center.
She paused, heart sinking. She hadn't received a note in years. Not since the anonymous hate letters after her brother's disappearance.
She opened it slowly.
Inside:
"You sang last night."
She looked around. No one met her eyes.
Just then, the classroom speakers crackled.
The daily announcements began.
But instead of the usual school jingle —
A soft piano melody began to play.
Her melody.
Untitled_27.
Eura's blood ran cold.
She grabbed her bag and fled the classroom, her breath catching in her throat.
In the hallway, she stopped only when she reached the stairwell, where no one could hear her panic.
She pressed herself against the wall.
Her fingers trembled as she clutched her phone. She opened the remix again.
And played it.
Her brother's voice was still there.
But now — something new.
Barely audible under the final chorus.
A whisper layered beneath the harmonies.
She boosted the volume. Cleaned the audio. Focused.
The whisper became clearer.
> "Baekhyun Station. Platform 4. 10:27 PM."
A time.
A place.
She checked the date.
It was today.
10:17 PM.
Eura stood outside Baekhyun Station, the hood of her jacket pulled low, masking her face from passing glances. The city buzzed with late-night commuters and neon signs flickering like dying stars. A thin drizzle clung to the air, just enough to blur everything without soaking it.
Her hands clenched the straps of her backpack.
The whisper in the remix echoed in her mind like a dare.
"Platform 4. 10:27 PM."
She hadn't come out of trust.
She came out of need.
Need to know.
Need to breathe.
Need to believe her brother hadn't vanished into a lie.
She descended the stairs.
Baekhyun Station was older than most — tiles stained, air heavy with rust and damp. A forgotten place for forgotten people.
Platform 4 was at the far end. Past the vending machines with flickering lights. Past the security camera that didn't move.
She stepped onto the platform.
Empty.
Completely.
Not a soul.
Not a train.
Only the soft hum of electricity and the faint echoes of announcements in the distance.
She checked the time.
10:24 PM.
Three minutes.
She stepped back from the yellow line.
Her breath fogged the air.
She swallowed.
And waited.
The silence was so complete it felt alive.
Her heartbeat slowed to match the rhythm of the subway tracks beneath her feet.
Then —
A wind.
No train.
But a wind rushed through the tunnel.
Cold. Sharp.
She turned sharply.
Someone stood at the far end of the platform.
Not walking.
Not moving.
Just... there.
Tall. Black coat.
Face shadowed by a cap.
She froze.
The figure raised a hand — not to wave, but to press something to their ear.
A pair of headphones.
He was listening.
To her.
To the melody she had composed.
The one only she and her brother had shared.
She took a step forward.
Another.
But the moment her foot crossed the yellow line—
A whisper broke the air.
Not from him.
From the tunnel.
A voice. His voice.
"Don't come closer, Eura."
Her eyes widened.
She knew that voice like the bones of her own body.
"Run," it whispered. "Now."
The lights above flickered.
A loud screech of metal from deep in the tunnel.
A train?
No.
Something darker.
She backed away instinctively — but it was too late.
The entire platform trembled.
The overhead lights burst, one by one, in rapid succession.
And then —
darkness.
Total.
Blinding.
Crushing.
She couldn't see.
Couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding in her ears and the distant sound of... singing?
A boy's voice.
Soft.
Sad.
The lullaby.
It circled around her, impossible to trace.
Like the platform itself had become an echo chamber for memory.
Then — a hand.
Touching hers.
Warm.
She gasped.
But before she could speak —
A flash of white light ripped through the black.
And everything fell silent again.
---
Eura woke up in her own bed.
Breathless.
Was it a dream?
She sat up, heart thudding in her chest. Her jacket was damp. Her shoes muddy.
On her nightstand —
Her headphones.
Still playing.
She lifted them slowly.
Listened.
And heard it.
A new voice.
Male. Calm. Slightly distorted.
> "You heard him, didn't you?"
She flinched.
Paused the track.
Silence.
She skipped backward in the audio file.
Played it again.
> "You heard him, didn't you?"
Not her brother.
Someone else.
The figure on the platform?
The voice continued.
> "He's not gone. But he's not... fully here. The sound has him now."
The sound?
She rewound again.
But the message was gone.
Deleted from the file.
It had only played once.
Like a signal.
A warning.
Or a clue.
She checked the upload date.
Her file had been modified at 10:41 PM.
Ten minutes after the incident.
When she was unconscious.
By someone else.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number again.
This time, no text. Just a link.
A private stream.
L
IVE.
She tapped it.
The screen blinked.
A dim video appeared — security cam footage of a subway platform.
Platform 4. Baekhyun Station.
The timestamp: Now.
And in the footage —
A girl standing at the edge.
Her.
She didn't blink.
She couldn't.
The livestream showed the exact version of her — hoodie, black jeans, even the same way she tucked her hands into her sleeves — standing alone at Platform 4.
But she was here, in her room.
Watching herself.
Her chest tightened.
Every breath hurt.
She reached for her phone again.
Paused the stream.
Rewound.
The girl didn't move like a normal person.
Her gestures were half-delayed, almost like a corrupted video file, just slightly off from real time.
Glitchy.
And the more she stared, the more wrong it felt.
Her copy — her shadow — was humming.
She couldn't hear it, but the slight movement of the lips was unmistakable.
The lullaby.
The same one she hadn't sung aloud since she was twelve.
That song belonged only to her and her brother.
So how could this copy know it?
Why now?
Why tonight?
The chat on the livestream had no viewers.
No comments.
Just one pinned message:
> "When sound leaves the body, the body forgets. But the song remembers."
She tapped the screen.
Tried to trace the link.
Error.
It led to no server.
No replay.
When she refreshed it —
The stream vanished.
Gone.
Just like the voice.
Just like the remix.
Just like him.
---
At school the next day, something else had shifted.
People still didn't speak to her, but they looked at her longer than usual.
Too long.
Too still.
In first period, the teacher called her name.
For the first time in two years.
"Han Eura?"
The class turned.
She looked up slowly, hesitant.
Nodded.
"You're assigned to Group C for the Audio Project," the teacher said, reading off the sheet. "Work with Min Jaewon and Lee Aerin. Deadline is Friday."
Jaewon.
Her spine tensed.
He wasn't from her class.
He wasn't even from the same year.
But she'd seen him before — walking the halls with noise-canceling headphones slung around his neck, a distant look in his eyes like he was always hearing something others couldn't.
Some said he was a dropout who came back.
Others whispered he was a genius kicked out of a recording academy in New York.
No one really knew.
But he looked at her like he did.
Like he knew the remix.
Like he knew the platform.
Like he had been watching.
Later that day, she found a flash drive in her locker.
Unlabeled.
Black.
Bare.
She shouldn't have opened it.
But she did.
Inside: one file.
soundless.mp3
Her heart dropped.
She played it.
The track was... chaos.
Not music. Not really.
Snippets of subway announcements.
Children laughing.
Reverse piano keys.
A boy whispering her name, then screaming it.
Then silence.
Then a low, distorted voice.
> "You opened the door, Eura. Now it sings back."
She stopped it immediately.
Ripped out the drive.
She wanted to scream.
But there was no sound.
There never was.
---
That night, her mother knocked once before pushing the door open.
"You haven't eaten."
Eura turned away from her laptop.
"I'll eat later."
A lie.
Her mother stood there, holding a bowl of soup she didn't even intend to leave behind.
Her expression — somewhere between tired and disappointed.
"You're not sick again, are you?"
She didn't answer.
Her mother clicked her tongue.
"Still playing your little ghost songs?"
Eura didn't flinch.
"You think your brother's listening, don't you?"
That stung.
She didn't show it.
Her mother placed the bowl on the desk and left without another word.
The door clicked shut.
Eura sat back.
The room was cold.
Not from weather — from memory.
She plugged in her headphones again.
Opened her software.
New project.
This one she named directly:
"Soundless_1"
She didn't compose a melody.
She waited.
And then
—
A waveform began to appear.
On its own.
Keys played without her touching them.
Layers stacked by themselves.
A new track was forming.
She wasn't composing it.
She was receiving it.
---