I didn't even wait for the questions.
When I burst out of the girls' bathroom, I heard gasps behind me—high-pitched voices, a shuffle of footsteps. I didn't wait for a conversation to start. I already knew the looks on their faces without having to see 'em.
"What was Han Ji-Sung doing in the girls' bathroom?!"
Yeah. That's what they were probably saying.
I bolted into the boys' bathroom like a shadow slipping between cracks.
The door slammed behind me.
I stumbled toward the sinks and grabbed the edges hard, white-knuckled, hunched over the porcelain like it could hold me up. My chest was caving in. My breathing started racing again.
It's happening again.
My fingers twitched, then curled into my hair. My hands shook violently. I stared at the sink, but I wasn't seeing it. Not really.
My mind was spiraling.
"I knew it was real…" I muttered, low like a prayer. "I knew something was wrong. It's really happening... it's really happening..."
The words came out over and over like a broken record, quiet, panicked. I rocked slightly, zoning in and out of the moment, stuck between past and present—between Jasmine's voice and my father's shadow, between her tears and my mother's blood.
I was back in that liquor store.
The hunchbacked man—the smell of rot—the flicker of the light above. The memory slammed me like a wave. I could feel my hands burning again. That heat, that awful heat crawling up my arms. My heart thudded like it wanted to break out of my ribs.
Breathe. Breathe.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to steady myself. Inhale. Exhale.
Then—
BANG.
The bathroom door flung open.
The sound cracked through the room like thunder.
I jolted upright, eyes wide, breath caught in my throat. My body went stiff, the tension snapping through me like a whip. My head turned slowly, breath shallow, bracing myself for what walked in.
It wasn't a monster.
It was a kid.
A tall, skinny teenager with glasses and a messy mop of hair. He was grinning, earbuds hanging out of his hoodie like spaghetti noodles.
"Whoa," he laughed, pausing at the sight of me. "You good, man? You look like you just saw finals week in the underworld."
I forced a weak laugh, trying to brush it off with a random lie. "Yeah, yeah. Just... ran here. Almost missed second period. Cardio kicked my butt."
He chuckled and walked past the wall of toilets, shaking his head. "I feel that. My mom just embarrassed the life outta me this morning. You know what she did? She stuffed a whole Tupperware of warm spaghetti in my backpack. I didn't even know until I sat down and it squished."
He made a face. "Bro, it smelled like grandma's kitchen in there."
I laughed, more genuinely this time. "That's some real mom-level sabotage."
"Right?" he said, still laughing. "I swear she's trying to get me jumped."
Then he grinned wider and said, "But hey—I love her though. She's like… my angel. Even when she's wildin' out."
I moved to the sink and turned on the faucet. The cold water hit my hands, numbing them slightly. I splashed it on my face, over and over, letting the chill ground me.
"By the way," the guy said as I reached for the paper towels, "name's Quincy. Quincy Bowers. I've seen you around. You're Han Ji-Sung, right?"
I nodded, drying my face. "Guilty."
"You're kinda a legend, man," he said, still chuckling. "You're like the class clown, therapist, and PR manager all rolled into one. Heard you made that racist chick disappear last week."
"She banished herself," I said, smirking. "I just turned up the heat."
"Respect," Quincy said, lifting an invisible hat.
I looked into the mirror one last time. My face was pale, my eyes haunted. But I was calming down.
Then I noticed something in the reflection.
Quincy was standing still now, his head tilted toward the last stall.
His smile had faded.
He was staring at it.
"Hello?" he called, knocking lightly. "You okay in there?"
I froze.
He knocked again. "Yo? You good?"
The door didn't move. No sound. Just silence.
Quincy turned toward me, raising an eyebrow. "This dude's either taking the world's deepest nap or..."
I stepped beside him, eyes narrowing as I peered down.
There were legs sticking out under the stall.
Just lying there.
"Knock harder," I told him, pulse picking up. "See if he moves."
Quincy frowned but did it anyway. THUMP THUMP THUMP. "Hey! You alright in there?"
Nothing.
Then Quincy leaned in and squinted. "Wait... yo... I think I see blood or something. Like, under his leg. I don't know, dude, this don't look right."
His voice cracked a little. He looked around the room, then at the floor near the wall. "Wait, hold up—there's a mop handle."
He grabbed it, wedged it up under the latch of the stall, and tried jimmying it. After a few seconds of careful pushing, we both heard a soft click.
The lock slid free.
The stall creaked open.
And we both froze.
There was a boy slumped against the toilet, head tilted, mouth slightly open.
His body looked… emptied out.
Not just collapsed—collapsed inward. His chest was caved in, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes barely open, like he'd died mid-sentence. His lips were cracked, blistered. And the smell—sharp and metallic—hit us in waves.
But what made my skin crawl… were the holes.
Perfect circles.
One in his neck. Another in his forearm. A third, right over his ribs. Each one was deep—clean-edged—but the flesh around them was swollen, blackened, like something had burned its way in and then sucked everything out.
You could see muscle tissue where skin used to be.
His veins were discolored. His fingernails broken. There was barely any blood. Just these twisted streaks of something dark and thick, like the last bits of whatever he had left inside.
Quincy reeled back, eyes wide. "Oh my goodness... oh my goodness—"
He slammed the stall door shut, but it bounced off the frame and hung crooked, open just enough to keep seeing it—him.
He turned to me, pale, breathing fast. His eyes scanned my face. I saw it there—his mind racing, trying to make sense of it, trying not to ask the question burning on the edge of his tongue.
He knew who I was.
Han Ji-Sung.
The good guy. The funny one. The helper. The hero.
But now I was the only one in that bathroom.
And I saw it flicker behind his eyes.
Not hate. Not blame. Just fear.
Did I do this?
"I didn't do this."
My voice came out flat. Not cold. Not scared. Just certain.
Quincy turned his eyes on me, glassy with panic. I looked straight back—no fidgeting, no flinching. My gaze was steady, locked in. I knew what it looked like when someone was lying. I knew how not to look like that.
"You know me," I said calmly. "I've got trauma. I go to therapy. I've seen... horrible stuff. I've seen my parents die. But I didn't do this. And deep down... you know I wouldn't."
For a moment, he just stood there, shaking. But I saw it in his face. He believed me.
Still, he couldn't stop trembling.
"This is... this is messed up," he muttered, voice cracking. "I don't know what happened, man, but we gotta go. We need to tell someone. The principal, security, I don't care. This—this is not right."
He was already backing away, toward the exit, horror stretching across his face like a mask he couldn't tear off. His eyes stayed on the half-closed stall like it might reach out and grab him.
He turned and left, fumbling at the door handle. "We gotta go—"
The door slammed shut behind him.
I went after him, yelling, "Wait—!"
But the moment I reached for the handle to pull it open again—
I heard something.
A breath.
No—not just a breath. A struggle. A wet, gurgling inhale.
Like someone choking on their own spit... or worse.
It came from inside the bathroom.
Behind me.
I froze.
It couldn't have been him. The boy in the stall. There was nothing left in that body that could breathe—not after what we saw. Not with those holes. Not with how still he was.
But I heard it. I swear I did.
And I couldn't just leave.
My heart pounded, body screaming to run—but something inside, something deep and wrong, told me I had to check again. Had to be sure.
I turned back toward the stall.
The door was still cracked open.
I crept closer, silent, barely breathing. My sneakers made no sound on the tile. That noise—it was quieter now, but still there, raspy and distant, like it was traveling through something.
My eyes squinted at the body.
No movement.
But something caught my attention near the floor.
I kneeled down slowly.
The blood under his leg—it wasn't just red.
It was turning blue.
And it was moving.
It swirled like it was boiling under invisible heat. It pulsed. Bubbled. Twitched. Like it was thinking. Alive. It slid in veins across the tile, weaving tendrils outward like it was searching for something.
I stared at it in disgust, stomach tightening.
What was that?
I looked back up at the body—and something felt off about his mouth.
It hung open, jaw slack, but when I leaned in closer...
There was no tongue.
Just an empty black pit where it should've been.
I hesitated, then reached out two fingers to his neck, barely nudging his skin to feel for a pulse.
That's when his head tipped forward, heavy and loose, hanging far down like a puppet with its strings cut.
And that's when I saw it.
There was a hole. Clean, circular. Punched straight through the base of his skull like a perfect exit wound. But there was no gore. No brain matter. No mess.
Inside the hole... was nothing.
Just a cavernous void, smooth and hollow.
I gasped and stumbled back hard, heart lurching in my chest.
But then—
I heard the breathing again.
Only this time... it wasn't coming from in front of me.
It was behind me.
Right next to my ear.
And I felt it.
Cold. Wet. Wrong.
My spine locked. Every hair on my body stood straight up. I turned around, slowly, against every instinct screaming inside me not to.
And there it was.
It wasn't supposed to exist.
It towered over me, just inches away. A form that barely obeyed the rules of reality. Parts of it were shaped like a person—limbs, torso, a neck—but they were wrong. Too long. Too segmented. Stretched. Its skin—or what it had in place of skin—was pale, translucent, webbed in dark, pulsing veins. Some of those veins were bursting outward, peeling the flesh open like overripe fruit.
But the blood—
Blue.
Thick, gelatinous rivers of living blue ooze, crawling under its skin like worms under rice paper. It seeped out from the cracks in its shoulders, bubbling with growths—extra fingers, cartilage spurs, a piece of spine growing outside the body like it didn't know where it belonged. One eye was half-melted and blinked from the wrong side of its face. The other glowed faintly, but not with light—just emptiness.
And worse still...
It looked hungry.
Its chest expanded, and the blood inside it sloshed and twitched, as if something in there was trying to break free.
I wanted to scream, but my voice caught in my throat.
My body trembled, trapped, breath coming faster and faster. I felt sweat pour down my back. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth hurt.
The thing leaned forward.
And it watched me.
Unblinking. Unmoving. Like it was waiting for me to run.
I stared back into those awful, soulless eyes—and then I didscream.
I screamed so loud it burned my throat raw.
The thing opened its mouth—wider than any human should. Black ichor spilled from its tongue-less jaw, and it lunged—
And just like that—it vanished.
The door burst open.
"Everything alright in here?" a voice called out.
The janitor.
I didn't even answer. I didn't look at him. I just ran.
I sprinted past him like the walls were closing in, panic coursing through my veins like ice water.
Down the hall. Around the corner. Somewhere—anywhere—
I stopped near a trash can, legs giving out. My breathing came in short, ragged gasps. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I held them tight to my chest, trying to get control, trying to ground myself.
But I couldn't.
I hunched over, stomach twisting. I staggered forward a few steps, fingers digging into my sides.
Then I threw up.
Right there, in the trash can.
A few students looked over. Whispers. Concerned glances.
But I didn't see them.
Couldn't focus on anything.
I leaned on the wall, cold sweat dripping from my face, trying not to scream again. Trying not to fall apart.
Because whatever I saw in that bathroom?
It saw me back.