Light seeps through the blinds, slicing the kitchen air into thin, dusty columns. Within them, specks of dust lead their own slowed, somnambulistic life—as if they are the only ones in this house who know the true price of time. In the corner, a television mutters not in words, but in white noise: not information, but acoustic wallpaper, meant to prevent silence from taking root. And over everything else—the metronome of the wall clock: tick… tick… tick. A stubborn rhythm upon which this morning hangs, as if on rusted nails.
The kitchen smells of sesame oil and damp cloth—domestic comfort in its mundane, almost clinical form. Miyeok-guk, brewed since the night before, mingles with the steam of a freshly boiled kettle. This warmth does not embrace; it fixes: the day has been launched. The universe continues to revolve along its predictable, damnably dull orbit.
Jun sits at the table. His spoon moves with the grace of a malfunctioning automaton. The cold rice has clumped into tasteless lumps; the kimchi lies nearby—two sour slivers resembling exhibits in a museum of failed hopes. Food has no taste. Simply fuel.
Yuna dashes past—her hair, as always, living by its own laws. Laughter scatters across the kitchen like the rapid strikes of children's drums, bursting into his silence without warning. On the go, she speaks of a school project, waving sheets of paper, one edge of which is folded and already torn. The words fly through Jun without touching him. He nods, never taking his eyes off the gray screen inside his own head.
Mother stands at the stove. Her back is slightly bent—not from the fatigue of a single morning, but from the sum of years. Her hands move in circles: a spoon stirs the soup, the pot lid hopping in time with her breath.
"Have you eaten?"
A ritual question. Not a command, not care—a verification that the world is still holding together.
"Yes."
There is emptiness in this "yes," but for her, it is enough. She goes no further. Her nunchi—the subtle art of reading the atmosphere—functions flawlessly, and that is precisely why she prefers not to ask that for which there is no answer.
Her finger slides along the edge of the table and, for a moment, touches his palm. Not an embrace—a cautious tapping on the glass of an aquarium. Jun pulls his hand away. Not sharply. Automatically.
Mother's hand freezes in mid-air. Within this pause fits everything: her exhaustion, his alienation, the distance that cannot be filled even by the most proper soup.
"Aigoo..."
The word hangs like dust. She averts her gaze and adjusts the pot lid—a small, practical gesture returning them to the safe zone of the everyday.
Yuna grabs her backpack.
"Bye, Jun!"
Her voice leaves a bright spot in the air, like the afterimage of a camera flash. For her, color is the norm. For him, the world remains a switched-off television. He watches her leave and feels no pain. Only its absence.
Jun picks up his phone. The black mirror of the screen reflects neither notifications nor calls. He places it face down.
The kettle screams, releasing steam that smells of hot metal. Jun begins to eat faster—according to the unspoken code of their house: do not linger, do not make noise, do not be an extra anxiety. Mother places a lunch container before him. In her voice, there still trembles a tiny, almost shameful shard of hope.
"Take this, son."
"Thank you."
The warmth of the plastic in his hands feels foreign.
He stands up. The chair emits a short, plaintive squeak. Mother casts a quick glance at him—one full of unspoken prayers. Jun catches it and forces a smile, thin as ice on a spring puddle. She opens her mouth but only grips the edge of her apron tighter.
"Take care of yourself."
The door closes. The click of the lock severs the kitchen from the rest of the world. Jun takes a step onto the stairs. The rhythm of the morning still pulses in his head—viscous, inevitable: tick. tick. tick.
On the first landing, the phone in his pocket vibrates briefly.
He stops.
He looks at the screen but does not take it out.
And he walks on—to where, in the noise and the crowd, one can disappear completely.
---
The rhythm of the morning hours still pulses in his head as Jun crosses the school threshold. The same metronome—only now it is hidden within the hum of others' footsteps, in the sharp claps of doors, in the echo of voices. Tick. Inevitably. Tick.
The school corridor stretches before him like an endless concrete tunnel. The sound of hundreds of moving bodies merges into a dense, buzzing background, through which, like gunshots, the crash of slamming lockers breaks. The metallic impact vibrates within the walls and lingers in his ears longer than the flickering of the dying lamp beneath the ceiling. The air here is heavy, oversaturated with cheap perfume and chalk dust; it clings to the throat, forcing one to swallow bitterness. Aigoo… the crowd glues faces into a single gray mass, turning people into blurs—without contours or names.
Jun moves along the wall, instinctively trying to occupy as little space as possible. Shoulders lowered, his step is steady and dry—as if that same metronome now counts the seconds until the bell. An invisible weight pulls downward, forcing him to conserve every movement. His nunchi, honed over two years to the point of automatism, functions without failure: fewer words, fewer angles, be a shadow. This is no longer a skill—it is a way to avoid drawing fire.
A backpack catches on a doorframe. Jun jerks it toward himself—too sharply. Someone brushes him with an elbow. Someone's laughter, high and brittle like the fluttering of a trapped bird, rips through the air.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A voice without a face. Jun does not turn around. He simply puts on his customary armor—pure, distilled indifference. Someone's hand lingers for a second on his shoulder—by accident?—and vanishes.
In the classroom, the teacher's voice turns into the monotonous sound of the surf. Chalk taps against the board, setting a rhythm, but for Jun everything sounds muffled, as if he is deep underwater. Reality becomes flat. The tree outside the window seems cut from paper. Two-dimensionality is convenient—it requires no response.
He bites into the plastic of a pen until his teeth ache. The only reliable way to ensure the body is still here. The tapping of chair legs and the dull drum in his chest—two coordinates to hold onto. Around him, life seethes: whispers, the rustle of pages, the secret shimmer of screens beneath desks. Everyone strives to hold onto something elusive—attention, control, air.
His palm feels the cold of the plastic. "I am here," the mind states, without emotion.
Teo claps a hand on the desk. The sound cuts through space like a whip. Laughter explodes—sharply, without warning. Jun flinches. The nib of the pen slips, leaving a thin, ragged line on the paper. An ink blot slowly spreads—a tiny, shameful malfunction. Teo casts a brief glance: you still here?—and immediately turns away. Jun's presence dissolves like an error that no one deems important.
Invisibility is heavy armor. Sometimes it presses harder than everything it is meant to protect against. The noise thickens, becomes viscous. The bell does not save—it only shifts the pressure. Jun begins to count: two—inhale. Three—exhale. Small rituals keep him vertical: adjusting a shoelace, rearranging a pen, checking the backpack's lock.
From behind, a chair falls with a crash. The sound echoes in his shoulders with a flash of old, familiar pain. Blood roars in his ears; the world becomes dangerously sharp; a metallic taste of anxiety appears in his mouth. Jun grips the edge of the desk. His knuckles whiten.
Not here. Not now.
He understands: the margin of safety is exhausted. This is not weakness—it is the limit of the material. The body needs air. A space where sounds do not screw into the skull. He stands up slowly, without gestures. Nunchi prompts: leave quietly. The teacher is bent over a notebook; Teo is occupied with someone else's joke. The disappearance of a shadow goes unrecorded.
Jun reaches the door. The handle is cold—almost kindred. A click. The classroom remains behind him: dense, living, infinitely foreign. The corridor washes over him with a wave of noise, but as he moves away, it begins to crumble, to lose its sharpness. The air changes—it becomes clearer.
Jun takes his first real breath in a long time. Like a swallow of clear sky. Every step toward the stairs is a small act of liberation. The corridor empties. Ahead—only the echo of his own footsteps and the silent promise of the roof, where the sky asks no questions, and the wind does not smell of chalk and someone else's perfume.
---
The noise of the corridor still chases him with its echo when Jun turns into a side passage—the very one that most students avoid. Here, time flows by different, slowed laws. Behind his back, the door closes with a final click, and the hum of the school remains below. It fades like an old wave that lacked the breath to crawl to the shore.
Here, it smells of bleach and dry, exhausted paper. The scent of sterile routine—of a stranger's care, quiet and monotonous, like the beating of a heart. It clings to the nostrils but no longer presses down.
The first flight. His legs find the rhythm on their own: cautious at first, then more confident. Every step is a strike of the internal metronome, resonating somewhere beneath the ribs. Muscles begin to burn with a soft, unaccustomed warmth. A simple proof: the body is still his. He remembers how he used to rush for the bus, teeth clenched in rage. Now he ascends without a goal. Simply for the sake of the ascent itself. For the sake of being higher.
The walls here are honest—peeling, covered in a network of cracks like old skin. He runs a finger along the rusted strip of the railing. Rusty dust remains beneath his fingernails. A tiny mark: I was here.
Nunchi continues to function in the background. A floor above, a window is slightly ajar, and an old teacher glances out for a second. The gaze is stern and dispassionate—as if he is checking not discipline, but the temperature of the air. Jun does not avert his eyes; he only makes his step quieter. This is their shared language: distance instead of gestures. Not coldness—a form of connection.
His breathing levels out. Two steps—inhale. Two—exhale. The emptiness of the stairwells does not frighten; it refreshes. In the silence, details emerge that drown in the noise: the dry snapping of a light switch, the ghostly tap of a dripping faucet, a distant bell. Below, it sounds like a command. Here—like an echo from another dimension.
The staircase narrows. His hands rest on the railings. The metal is cold, rough, real. Light, having broken through a narrow window, cuts the concrete with a diagonal stripe. In this beam, dust motes move slowly and solemnly. Jun suddenly remembers childhood—how he tried to catch a sunbeam, believing that light could be carried away. Back then, the world was vast because of possibilities. Now—because of indifference.
The lock on the roof door hangs crookedly, mangled by dozens of graduates. In this school, an eternal war is waged: the administration installs locks, the seniors break them, considering the roof their territory.
Jun presses his shoulder against the cold surface. The door responds with a low, guttural groan—it demands effort, demands a right. Muscles tense until they tremble. His shoulder burns. After a final lunge, the door yields. The creak sounds like the tired sigh of an old mechanism.
The world changes not all at once, but perceptibly. The smells of bleach and chalk retreat. The wind carries away the school dust, mixing in salt and ozone. Overhead—the sky. High, open. Nothing hangs over him.
Jun inhales deeply, until his lungs ache. The air is cold, clean. The wind touches his face; the sun blinds him for a second. The weight in his shoulders eases, but does not vanish—it simply steps back. Here, one can hear one's own body. Count the heartbeats. Remember that you are not only a shadow in the corridor.
He stands by the door, motionless. The roof does not promise salvation. It provides a respite.
And for now, that is enough.
---
The wind on the roof gradually subsides. It does not vanish—it simply ceases to demand attention. Jun approaches the edge and looks down.
The city dissolves into a gray drizzle of cars and tiny figures. From up here, people seem like ants, and their immense tragedies—merely thin lines on the fabric of a coat. Beneath his ribs, there is neither fear nor vertigo. Only a level, familiar emptiness that long ago ceased to frighten and became something akin to an inner skin.
He came here not for the sake of a dramatic escape. He needed a place without demands and words—a brief pause in the school day, an error in the schedule where only the wind holds sway.
The roof smells of ozone and old bleach. A strange mixture of hospital tranquility and courtyard grime. Jun walks along the wall and sits beside his ventilation block—a rusted cylinder bolted to the concrete. He settles himself so as to merge with the peeling pipe and the tapless sink, to become yet another detail that no one notices.
He was not looking for it specifically.
A capricious glint of sun, reflected off the metal, forces him to lean over. Behind the pipe, in the shadows, lies a notebook—hidden securely enough to look forgotten. The cover of cheap imitation leather is almost clean; only the corners are slightly worn—this is how one handles that which they are afraid to damage. When Jun reaches out his hand, the paper responds with a quiet rustle. From the cold binding, a barely perceptible tremor passes into his fingers.
He places the notebook on his knees.
On the first page, there is neat handwriting: "Taking personal belongings is not good, but I no longer care, so take it. Just kidding. Do not take it… Put it back."
Jun huffs almost imperceptibly—a movement more in his chest than on his face.
Only now does he notice the drawing on the cover. A fox, rendered in black gel pen. The work is executed with frightening meticulousness: a squinted eye looks mockingly; thin strokes of fur intertwine with curls of smoke. The drawing seems too alive for a chance object.
Something tightens beneath his ribs.
His fingers are already catching the edge of the cover. One movement—and another's thoughts will open, assemble into a voice, name a name. The desire to feel a presence burns his palms. And along with it comes another feeling—sticky, sobering. To open the notebook means to cross a line. To take for oneself that quiet space for the sake of which he himself ascended here.
The fox seems not to avert its gaze.
Jun freezes and presses the notebook to his chest. The object suddenly grows heavy, as if inside it there is not paper, but air gathered from someone's breaths. Somewhere below, a door slams, a reminder of the school, but the sound arrives already muffled. The weight of the notebook feels stronger than the backpack.
He stands up slowly. Another's secret warms through the fabric of his jacket, leaving on his skin not pain, but a trace—as if after a long touch.
Jun stands on the roof with the notebook in his hands and understands: he came here to disappear.
But he stayed—because he found something.
---
The notebook lies by the pipe, opened upon his knees, and the roof once more seems neutral—merely concrete, wind, and sky. Jun sits motionless, allowing the silence to settle. He has not yet decided what to do next.
The door behind his back creaks like an old, dry tooth.
The sound shatters the silence instantly.
Jun flinches. His fingers clench convulsively, but the notebook still lies outside—on the gray concrete, too noticeable, too foreign. He freezes, holding his breath—a foolish, almost childish hope that if he does not move, he might merge with the shadows and become part of the roof.
"Hey! You!"
The voice is hoarse, cracked, with the aftertaste of lived years.
"Smoking again? Turn around and face your elders, you fledgling!"
The sharp scent of dried fish, cheap tobacco, and bleach hits his nose. Mr. Park. His presence always announces itself before his footsteps.
Jun slowly straightens up. The roof suddenly becomes dangerously open. The blue notebook on the gray concrete cuts the eyes—like an error that someone forgot to erase.
Park takes a step forward.
And only then does the body act faster than thought.
Jun's hand dives down. His jacket rustles too loudly, treacherously, but the movement is precise. The notebook vanishes beneath his clothes, pressed against his stomach. The cold cover with the drawing of the fox touches his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt—a brief, searing contact.
He does not look down. He does not check. He simply knows: it is hidden.
"I am not smoking, Mr. Park," he says quietly, only afterward.
"He is not smoking!" Park approaches closer, stomping comically like an angry pigeon. "All of you 'are not smoking' here, and then the sensors wail! Why have you gone quiet? Hiding something? Come on, show me your pockets!"
He nods toward the pipe.
There is no time.
Jun's hand dives down again. His jacket rustles too loudly, but the movement is precise. The notebook vanishes beneath his clothes, pressed against his stomach. The cold cover touches his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. The contact is brief—and searing.
"There is nothing there," Jun takes a step forward, closing the distance.
"Liar," Park grumbles, barring the way with his reeking body. "Get out of here, before I tell the principal you are performing your rituals here. I better not see your shadow here again. Do you understand?"
"I understand. Forgive me."
Jun slips past, nearly brushing against the coarse fabric of the worn-out jacket. Following him comes a clicking of the tongue and a muttering about a "generation without discipline."
The staircase receives him with a hollow echo. He descends quickly, almost at a run. The notebook slides against his body, reminding him of itself with every step. Inside, it is strangely quiet—only the pulse in his temples counts the seconds.
The corridor meets him with its customary chaos. Jun stops by a wall, pretending to adjust the strap of his backpack, and inconspicuously presses the protruding rectangle beneath his jacket with his elbow.
One. Two. Three.
The rhythm levels out.
He merges into the flow of students. In the crowd, no one notices him, and for the first time, this does not feel like a defeat. The notebook warms his skin not with heat—but with weight. By the very fact of its presence.
For the rest of the day, it remains with him: in the noise of intersections, between the concrete boxes of high-rises that resemble tombstones. The city notices nothing. People pass by, not knowing that beside them walks a man who has carried away another's secret from the roof.
When Jun closes the door to his room late in the evening, he is truly alone for the first time that day. He hesitates, then finally takes out the notebook and places it on the desk.
Under the lamp, the fox on the cover looks directly at him.
Jun reaches out his hand—
And at that moment, a folded sheet of paper falls out of the notebook.
He does not yet unfold it.
But he already understands:
Whatever is written there, he was not supposed to be the first to see it.