Ji-hoon didn't dream often. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't let himself. Sleep, to him, was a fortress—a cold, soundproof room where he could escape the world, wrapped in the only kind of silence he trusted. The kind where even his mind didn't dare whisper. But that night, something breached the walls.
It began with warmth, oddly enough.
A strange heat curled around his fingertips as if he'd dipped his hands into sunlight. It soaked through the skin, moved like syrup under his veins, and filled his chest with a pulse that didn't belong to him. Then came the sound—soft at first, like the edge of a bow grazing a violin string, uncertain and shaky. But soon it swelled, trembling into something violent and familiar: the note he'd never been able to forget. F sharp. A note that once belonged to his mother's lullaby, now fractured and distorted into something twisted.
Then everything turned red.
Not just red as in the color. It was red that bled. Red that screamed. Red that dripped from the ceiling like tears and ran down invisible walls. He didn't see it, not in the way others would, but he felt it with terrifying clarity. It pressed behind his eyes, hummed against his temples, and soaked into the ground he stood on.
He was standing now, barefoot on a cold floor. The tile was slick beneath him—wet, but not with water. The scent hit next, violent and sharp: copper, rust, smoke. The unmistakable perfume of death.
He reached out instinctively, palms grasping for orientation, and his fingers met something rough—fabric, maybe. But it shifted beneath his touch. He yanked his hand back, breath catching as he realized what it was.
Skin.
Dead skin.
It was cold, stiff, and slick with something warm—something fresh.
Ji-hoon staggered back, his heart thundering, and the violin started again. Louder. Clearer. But now, it wasn't just playing. It was weeping. Every note cracked like a bone, each vibrato a cry too afraid to form into words.
And then he heard her voice.
"Ara."
He didn't say it—he heard it. A whisper behind him, one he could never forget. It was soft. Male. Sharp. Cruel. The voice of the man who'd ended her song too soon.
He spun, and though his eyes saw nothing but a world of crimson heat and shadow, he felt him there—Si-wan. The heat of his breath. The press of something sharp between them. The weight of a decision already made.
"I told her," the voice murmured, "if she didn't back down… he'd be next."
And then Ji-hoon saw the memory, but not as a scene. He became it.
He was standing in the doorway of a dimly lit room. A hotel? No… a clinic. The one where his mother used to volunteer, maybe. She was there, her back to him, speaking low and urgently to a man with soft shoes and cruel cologne. Ji-hoon couldn't see her face, but he felt her hand shake as she held something out to the man. A file. A recording. Something she shouldn't have had.
The man slapped it away.
She flinched but didn't move.
"Leave my son out of this," she said, her voice steady even when her fingers weren't.
"Too late," the man said. "He's already in it."
And then the room was on fire.
The memory dissolved into smoke, and Ji-hoon was back in the dream-world—a red corridor stretching endlessly, lined with doors. He walked, bare feet sticky against the floor, hands trailing the walls. Each door pulsed with sound, like piano keys pressed too hard. He paused at one. 507.
His breath caught.
He reached for the handle, but it was already open. Swinging. Beckoning.
Inside, the room was not a room. It was a stage.
Empty.
Except for one chair.
And one piano.
He walked in, heart in his throat, the silence now so loud it deafened him. He sat at the piano.
His hands hovered.
And then, they moved.
He didn't know the song. It wasn't one he'd practiced. It wasn't written. But his fingers played it like they had always known. A song without words. A melody soaked in grief, in rage, in guilt. The notes screamed the things he never dared to say: I'm sorry. I miss you. I hate him. I should have known. Why didn't I know?
The keys bled under his fingers. Every chord was soaked in red. Every arpeggio sounded like bones breaking underwater.
Then the audience appeared.
Dozens of them.
Silent.
Faceless.
But he knew them.
One wore Seol-ah's hoodie. Another stood with Si-wan's smirk. One child held the Rubik's cube his mother once took from his pocket. All of them stared.
And at the center, one woman sat with her hands folded in her lap.
His mother.
Ara.
Her head lifted as if sensing him, her features blurred, but her presence unmistakable. She did not smile. She did not weep. She only nodded, and Ji-hoon felt everything collapse inside him. His hands froze.
"I don't know how to keep playing," he whispered.
And Ara, without speaking, lifted one hand and pointed behind him.
He turned.
There was another piano.
This one was not bleeding. It was warm.
Lit from underneath by soft white light.
And standing beside it—Joon-won.
His hand on the bench.
A place for Ji-hoon to sit.
And behind him, the others—Hye-jin with her violin at the ready. Seo Joon-won's determined stance. Even Ji-eun, silent and watching, her eyes filled with something almost like remorse.
They weren't ghosts.
They were real.
Living.
And they were waiting for him to come back.
Ji-hoon stepped away from the bleeding keys. Every footstep echoed louder than the next.
He reached the second piano.
And sat.
He didn't play.
But his hands stopped shaking.
And for the first time, the dream flickered from red… to gold.
And then he woke up. Cold sweat. Heavy breath.
But a strange warmth in his chest.
Like maybe, somehow, part of the nightmare had bled out—and taken a little of the pain with it.
He didn't move for a long time after waking.
Ji-hoon lay still in the dark, surrounded by a silence that wasn't peaceful, but heavy—dense with the lingering echo of what he'd seen in the dream. His breaths were shallow. His fingers, curled loosely on the sheets, still ached from the imagined weight of those keys, the phantom blood that had clung to them. Somewhere in the apartment, the fridge hummed. A pipe ticked. The distant sound of a car rolled up the street.
But all of it felt miles away.
Inside, his world was still red.
Not the kind that screamed anymore. But the kind that settled like a stain. The kind you couldn't scrub out of your skin, no matter how many times you washed your hands. Ji-hoon reached for the edge of the bed, then paused. His body was trembling slightly. Not from fear—but from something deeper. A current running under the surface, too raw to name. The dream hadn't been a dream. Not really. It was memory, grief, guilt, and anger stitched together into a violent hallucination. And it had told him one thing clearly:
This wasn't over.
The past he'd tried to bury—Si-wan's threats, the clinic, his mother's secrets—it was still alive. Not just in the files, or in the rumors, or even in the scars it left behind. It was living inside him, breathing in every note he played, feeding off the silence between his words. And if he didn't confront it, it would burn everything he still had left.
He finally stood. The floor was cold beneath his feet, grounding him in the present. He moved through the apartment carefully, not because he couldn't navigate it, but because the weight of the dream had changed the air. Made it heavier. Sharper.
In the living room, the piano sat quiet.
He didn't touch it.
Instead, he walked past it, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face, gripping the edge of the sink tightly. The image of Ara at the piano wouldn't leave him. That silent nod. Not of approval. Not of peace. But of recognition. Like she knew what he had become. What he was about to do.
A low knock startled him.
He stiffened.
"Ji-hoon?" came a voice—Joon-won. "You okay?"
He hesitated. Then forced himself to unlock the door and open it.
Joon-won's face was tight with concern. "You didn't answer your phone."
Ji-hoon tilted his head. "I didn't hear it."
"That's a lie," Joon-won said, stepping in and closing the door. "I heard you from the hallway. You were shouting. I was about to break the damn door down."
Ji-hoon stayed quiet.
"What happened?"
Ji-hoon ran a hand over his face. "I saw her."
Joon-won blinked. "What?"
"In a dream. I saw Ara. I saw the man who killed her. I was in the room again, Joon-won. The one from the clinic. She gave him something. He threatened me. And then…" His voice cracked. "Everything burned."
Joon-won slowly lowered himself onto the couch. "Shit."
"She didn't smile. Not once," Ji-hoon whispered. "She just… nodded. Like she knew what I was about to do. Like she approved of it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I know where to go next."
Ji-hoon walked over to a small locked drawer near his desk and pulled it open. Inside was the file he'd hidden weeks ago—the one with names, contacts, places his mother had investigated before her death. And one of them stood out now more than ever.
A name scratched into a clinic's intake form: Shin Jun-ha.
He hadn't known it before.
But now, after the dream—after the voice—he was sure. Jun-ha was part of it. The way he spoke. The way he stood in the shadows of Si-wan's circle. The recordings Ji-eun had hinted at. They all pointed toward him.
He grabbed the paper and shoved it in his coat pocket.
"Ji-hoon," Joon-won said, standing. "You can't go alone."
"I wasn't asking."
"I know, but you're not thinking straight."
"No," Ji-hoon said, facing him fully. "I'm finally thinking clearly."
Joon-won exhaled and gripped his shoulder. "Then let me come with you."
Ji-hoon hesitated, but the heat still pulsed in his chest. The dream wasn't a message for one man. It was a warning to both of them. The time for waiting was over.
"Fine," Ji-hoon said quietly. "Let's end this."
By the time they reached the location listed on the document, the city was still asleep. A low fog hugged the pavement. The building was old, tucked behind a line of forgotten businesses on a street that hadn't seen life in years. But Ji-hoon knew it instantly.
This was where the red dream had ended.
The door creaked open under their touch. Joon-won scanned the darkness while Ji-hoon listened—really listened. He could hear the hum of something electrical deeper inside. A server? A generator? Maybe a surveillance system. Every breath, every echo told him someone had been here recently.
And then he heard something else.
A piano.
Soft. Barely audible.
But familiar.
F sharp.
His whole body tensed.
"Someone's here," he whispered.
Joon-won nodded. "Stay behind me."
They moved together, slow and silent, through the dark hallway until the source of the sound came into focus—a room in the back, light spilling through the cracks of a barely-shut door.
Ji-hoon touched the wall, grounding himself.
And then, slowly, he pushed the door open.
What he heard… shattered him.
A recording.
It was his mother.
Her voice.
In an old file, looping quietly through a speaker.
"I don't care what you threaten. You'll never touch my son."
And then a click.
Then her lullaby.
Ji-hoon dropped to his knees.
The dream hadn't been just trauma. It was a map.
And he had just followed it into the past she died to protect.
"We scream online, whisper in real life, and call it surviving silence."