Kim "Horangi" Hong-jin

The scent of grilled meat and soju still clung to Hong-jin as he stumbled into the dimly lit lobby of his apartment complex, brown eyes glinting through the haze of intoxication. The night had bled into a blur; the walk from the Jjam had been lost to autopilot. It didn’t matter. All he craved was the solitude of his nearly empty one-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor, a space he barely recognized as his own. The ₩658,333 small apartment rarely saw him, he never lingered in that place, spending most of his time abroad or within in the grounds of the KorTac base. And frankly? He preferred that to this.

He didn’t care about the place or about the neighbors. The apartment before his seemed cursed with turnover, tenants changed like most people changed socks: sometimes a family, sometimes a lone man, sometimes a couple. They never lasted. Strange, maybe, but he never questioned it. Maybe it was the plumbing, or maybe it was the view — perfect through the windows inside the apartment but once one stepped outside it seemed ruined by the emergency stairwell outside. Looking down into it felt like looking down into a maw awaiting to swallow whoever dared go down. Not many used it. Maybe it was the rent. The area. Or bad feng shui. Who gave a shit?

Running a hand through his hair, he staggered toward the elevator. His mind surfaced the memory through the haze: the bar talk. The dare. His ‘friends’, laughing over bottles, shoving the story at him like kids trading ghost stories. The Elevator Game. An urban legend about punching in the right sequence to reach another world. Bullshit, he thought. Kids’ stuff. But despite the bitterness and rage that had simmered back there, Hong-jin was never one to back away from a dare. That was the part of him that always got him into trouble in childhood — dares, pushing boundaries, testing fear. All that had bled into adulthood, childish impulses transformed into cards, dice, and bets he should’ve walked away from. Bravado had cost him enough to know better, and yet here he was, standing before the elevator.

He pressed the up arrow with his knuckle. The metallic tting! cut through the silent lobby, and the doors slid open with a faint hiss, revealing the empty, softly lit elevator car. It was ordinary, no different from hundreds of others he’d ridden. Stepping inside, Hong-jin faced the control panel as the doors thudded shut. His reflection stared back from the polished metal, eyes heavy with exhaustion. Should he? He fished a crumpled napkin from his jacket pocket, the sequence scrawled in sloppy pen: 4, 2, 6, 2, 10, 5.

His friend’s warning replayed. _Halfway down the street Min-Jun had stopped him, catching up with him. On his hand he carried a napkin that Tae-hyun and Ji-yeon hand sent him to ‘deliver’. Listen, don’t do it. It’s real. Min-jun had stammered, hesitating to hand it over as if he had suddenly been hit by regret. He glanced back to see the other two shuffling out the door their drunken laughter floating towards them, only then did he shove the paper on to his hands, recoiling back as if just a simple paper could burn. He looked scared. Good acting, Hong-jin had thought, he had always been good at it. If it works, whatever you do, when you see ‘The Others,’ do not breathe. And find the elevator you used as soon as you can. he added as a final warning before returning to his company. Hong-ji had laughed it off. Too much talk for a ridiculous urban legend, probably just a prank to spook drunk idiots like him who had abandoned his friends and who had clear zero desires to rekindle anything anymore. They must have forgotten the reason why.

His finger rose, hovered on the 8th floor then without thinking he jabbed the button for the first number in the sequence — 4th floor.

The car lurched like it was being pulled by ropes instead of cables. Ding! The doors opened, revealing a hallway identical to his own on the eighth floor. He stayed inside the cabin. “Alright,” he muttered. “Let’s see if this spook show’s worth the hype.”

He jabbed the 2nd floor. The panel lit up under his touch, the doors slid close and the descent began with another sluggish lurch.

Ding! Second floor. Empty.

Yawning, he rubbed his eyes, too tired for the suspense. “Fuck this.” He punched the rest of the sequence in quick succession. 6th. 2nd. 10th. 5th.

The cables groaned overhead. His reflection in the smudged mirror to his left showed a man caught between exhaustion and irritation, fingers drumming restlessly against his thigh, fighting sleep. He told himself it was just boredom, just exhaustion, the soju in his veins, but underneath it all something ugly stirred in his stomach: the needle prick of doubt. He didn’t want to name it, doing so would mean acknowledging it, making it real. Fear was for kids, for wide-eyed brats scared of the dark, not for a 37-year old man like him. The dare had seemed harmless over cheap drinks, but alone in this creaking metal box made him wonder.

What if it truly was real as Min-Jun had said?

He shoved it down, buried it beneath a scowl, telling himself it was just the claustrophobia. Tight spaces had always pressed against him, made his chest constrict, his ribs ache as if the walls themselves were alive, leaning in. He focused on that instead, any excuse to ignore the other, darker twitch in his gut.

The elevator shuddered to a stop. Ding! Hong-jin braced himself as the elevator doors parted, only to reveal nothing but the empty hallway of the fifth floor. Hong-ji scanned left and right, half-expecting the rumored woman from the legend to appear. Nothing. Just the hollow echo of his own steady breathing.

A brittle laugh broke from his chest. “바보,” he muttered at himself. Idiot. He ran a hand through his hair, shaking it off, letting the tension fall from his shoulders. “Ghost stories. Fucking kids shit.”

But then—

Something in the mirror.

His head snapped toward it. His reflection stared back, but its movements lagged — a half-second delay, like a video feed struggling to sync. The shit-eating smirk he wore faded away slowly. What the hell? He squinted, leaned closer and the reflection leaned too without any delay. A cold prickle crawled up his spine. He was sure he’d seen it. He wasn’t that fucking drunk, just three drinks, not enough for it to have such effect on his mind.

Before he could process it, the elevator jolted, continuing its path, the sudden motion snapping him out of his fixation.

“Aish, fucking eyes playing tricks,” he muttered, rapping his knuckles against the cold mirror. His reflection followed perfectly now. “Too old for ghost stories, Kim. Nothing’s here. Just a damn game.” But the words felt hollow.

He exhaled slowly, steadying himself. The doors remained open, the hallway beyond empty. Nothing had happened. He pressed the button for the 1st to return. But as the doors began their slow, grinding closure, a shimmer caught his eye in the polished brass — a fleeting, distorted shape, humanoid, like heat rising off asphalt. He spun around but there was nothing. Just his own wary face staring back. An involuntary shiver traced down his spine. The doors sealed shut with a soft thud, and the elevator lurched upward, ignoring his command for the first floor. The indicator lights flickered erratically— 6, 7, 8, 9 —climbing higher.

The hum of the machinery grew into a guttural growl, vibrating through the floor and into his bones. The lights sputtered, plunging the car into near darkness before flickering back to a sickly yellow. Pressure built in his ears, the kind that came with rapid ascent. This wasn’t just climbing; it was surging, faster than any residential elevator should. Hong-ji braced against the wall, muscles taut.

“This is no game,” he muttered. His reflection caught his eye again, and his stomach twisted then dropped. The Hong-jin in the mirror had eyes too wide, too dark, like inkwells swallowing the light. It wasn’t him. The mirrored figure’s head tilted unnaturally, its mouth curling into a grin he hadn’t made.

The elevator groaned, slowing. The panel flashed “25”—a floor that didn’t even exist in his twenty-story building—then went dark. Silence devoured the hum.

“You’re not scaring me, you bastard,” Hong-ji spat, pressing himself against the doors. His eyes flicked to the panel, then back to the mirror. The doors groaned open, and he stumbled backward, landing hard on the floor with a grunt. Scrambling to his feet, he glanced at the mirror as the doors began to close. His reflection was normal again.

He turned, walking a couple of paces further into the hall, boots thudding softly in the eerie silence. The hallway stretched before him, identical to the others, but through the windows at the hall’s end, there was no Busan skyline. What stood in its place was a hazy, crimson sky that loomed like blood diluted in water.

Hong-ji froze, glancing back. The elevator’s display now read “운행 중지,” Out of Service_, its half-open doors revealing rusted machinery where the car should have been. Where he had just been. His pulse hammered. Trapped. He replayed the rules — don’t look at her, don’t speak to her, don’t acknowledge the woman. But no woman had appeared. Only the mirror. The hazy figure. Something had boarded.

Kung…kung…

A faint sound reached him, like heavy, dragging footsteps. Whatever had entered the elevator was still here. Red light spilled across the floor, creeping halfway down the hall. He saw nothing, but he felt it. Heard it.

Kung… kung… kung…

Then, a sharp tadadak tadadak tadadak.

Halfway down however the noise died. Again only the dead silence reign. Chest heaving he glanced up then down. Nothing. There was nothing.

“씨발!” Hong-ji bolted for the stairwell, vaulting two steps at a time. The sound pursued, a relentless rhythm echoing in the crimson-tinged dark. Halfway down, the noise stopped. Silence reigned again.

Chest heaving, he glanced up, then down at the stairwell. The concrete steps spiraled sharply at each landing. Nothing.

Then,

Kung… kung… kung.

Now from below.

“야! 꺼져!” he spat out in defiance

The shout ricocheted through the concrete shaft, echoing back at him in distorted fragments— 여… 꺼져… 져… — until it no longer sounded like his own voice at all. Then silence.

He gripped the stairwell railing, knuckles white, and descended, each step deliberate. When he reached the next landing, his breathing was ragged. The exit sign flickered. He spun around, searching for the elevator, Min-jun’s warning screaming in his head: Find the elevator you used. But there was no elevator. Only the sound, now above, now below, now everywhere, and yet nothing moved. No pale faces. No creepy looking long haired entities. Nothing.

Hong-jin stopped, back pressed to the cold wall. That thing from the 25th floor…He could feel it — eyes, not human, boring into him from the shadows. Min-Jun’s voice came again: Don’t breathe. He held his breath, chest burning, and squinted into the crimson haze. A shape flickered at the edge of his vision, humanoid-like, its limbs were too long, it seemed to be whispering something, or pray, the words too fast and garbled to be understood. Then its head cocked at an impossible angle. It didn’t move. And then…it shuffled upward, body swaying.

He exhaled only when he was sure it was gone, a low, shuddering breath, and the shape vanished at a landing. But the sound came again from above._ Kung… kung…_. Had it been…waiting? It wasn’t chasing him anymore, but it was coming down.

Spitting a curse, he tore himself from the wall and shouldered the exit door. Light detonated in his eyes. He staggered, blinking through the glare, and when the world swam back into focus, Busan was no longer Busan.

The city sprawled before him, but it was a ghost of itself, a liminal husk. Buildings stood with their windows dark. The streets were devoid of any traffic. And above, that cursed sky bled all into an unnatural crimson light.

He turned, heart pounding, as the door clicked shut behind him. His shadow stretched across the cracked pavement, but it wasn’t alone now. Another shape flickered there, its edges fraying like smokey water. It moved when he didn’t and he knew that whatever thing had entered the elevator had caught up with him.