The basement apartment smelled of mold and old rain. Cracks lined the ceiling like veins, and every time a neighbor upstairs walked across their floor, dust rained down onto her small desk.
Han Soojin sat in the dark, her homework spread out in front of her, though her pen hadn't moved for hours. The textbooks were borrowed, their covers frayed and scribbled over. She didn't own any of them. Nothing here belonged to her, not even her name.
Her classmates thought she was just another quiet face. A loner. A girl too awkward or strange to be worth befriending. No one knew the truth—that she was the illegitimate daughter of a mid-level politician. Her existence was a stain on his career, something to be hidden away, never acknowledged.
Her mother had raised her alone, working three jobs, surviving on scraps. But when her mother got sick, the man who should have helped didn't even send a doctor. Instead, it was his wife who came to the hospital—not to help, but to mock.
"I told him you'd be nothing but a mistake," the woman had sneered at her dying mother. "Now you're rotting, and your little bastard will follow."
Soojin had stood there, fourteen years old, clutching her mother's hand, hearing every word while her half-brothers and half-sisters laughed behind the wife's back like it was a private show.
Her mother died a week later. Alone. Forgotten.
From then on, Soojin stopped trying to be seen. Her father never registered her name in official records. No ID. No school fees. No allowance. On paper, she didn't exist.
She lived in this damp basement, doing laundry for neighbors to pay rent, buying instant noodles in bulk. At school, she wore the same uniform until the stitching frayed, washed it every night in cold water. Her teachers didn't care. Her classmates didn't notice.
She was invisible.
Some nights, when the loneliness clawed too hard, she wrote letters to her mother in an old notebook. She never signed them, because who signs a letter when they don't exist?
The silence was crushing.
Until tonight.
She unlocked her door and froze.
Someone was sitting on her narrow bed.
A boy. Young, maybe her age, still in his school uniform. His presence was calm but heavy, like the air bent around him. He wasn't supposed to be here, but somehow, it didn't feel like a threat. It felt like the world had cracked open and let someone in who was never meant to leave.
"Who are you?" Soojin whispered, her voice trembling more from disbelief than fear.
The boy didn't answer right away. He looked around the tiny basement—at the cracked walls, the damp ceiling, the stack of old notebooks. Then his eyes met hers.
"You've been erased," he said softly. "Not because of who you are, but because of who they are."
Her chest tightened. The words felt too sharp, too accurate.
"You know…?"
"I know everything," he replied, his tone steady. "What they did to your mother. How they left you with nothing. How they tried to make you a ghost in your own life."
Soojin's legs gave out, and she sank onto the chair by her desk, staring at him as if he weren't real. No one had ever spoken her truth aloud. Not once.
Tears stung her eyes, but she clenched her fists. "Why are you here?"
The boy leaned forward slightly, his gaze unwavering. "Because the unseen don't deserve to suffer alone."
Her breath hitched.
And then, with the weight of a vow that could break nations, he spoke the words that would change her life:
"When the powerful silence the dead, the unseen write the truth."
For the first time in years, Soojin didn't feel invisible. She felt seen.
The boy didn't move, didn't smile, didn't soften. But in his presence, the basement no longer felt like a grave. It felt like the beginning.