Cursed | Yang Hongseok

•8

Various nightmares were hautning me trough the whole night, most of them being wierdly unexplainable. I didn't remember all of them, but those that I did remember were quite similar to the ones I had the night before I met Hongseok for the first time. I saw ashes on the ground in front of me, and despite not having a clue what it meant, that sight was freaking me out to the point where I woke up early in the morning, my whole body shaking as if I fell asleep in the middle of a snow storm.

I got out of my bed, realising that I probably wouldn't be able to go back to sleep anyway. I didn't have work today, so I didn't really have to get up early and that was why I just sat on one of the chairs in the kitchen, looking blankly trough the window where the sun was just beggining to show on the horizon.

My life has always been pretty simple. If I wanted something, I would work hard for it in order to get it, because I have always been a firm believer that human beings create their own faith by their choices and actions. I didn't want that old me to change. I needed her right now.

*

After about an hour and a half, I was already feeling quite bored, so I decided to take a walk trough my neighbourhood. I put my coat on, but just as I was about to go out of my apartment, I accidentally put my hand in one of the pockets, touching something that I totally forgot was put there yesterday.

It was a piece of paper from Hongseok's house.

I spent a few seconds examining it. What could this random message mean?

Could it be... a code of some kind?

Even it it was, I probably wouldn't be able to figure it out. Not on my own, at least.

"Wait." I said out loud, my eyes becoming wide when I finally came to a realisation. I took my phone out of my other pocket, turning the GPS on and typing in the numbers and letters that were written on the paper before clicking the search button. After a few seconds, I had it all figured out.

This message wasn't just a bunch of random symbols.

It was an adress.

*

Maybe I should've made a plan before deciding to visit that place, and maybe I shouldn't have visited the place at all. But deep inside of me, there was a flame of curiosity burning so bright and it could only be put down by answers.

And somehow, I had a reason to believe I might find my answers there.

The location of the adress wasn't really near to my apartment, but I decided to go there on foot because I really needed to clear my thoughts before facing anything that I might find there. The walk towards there was quite long, but after about forty-five minutes, I finally arrived to my destionation.

I took a good look at the old building in front of me that was bathing in the early morning's sunrays. It looked like an abandoned factory of some kind, so I really couldn't understand why would anyone write this exact adress down.

Here goes nothing, I thought, approaching the old iron door. Surprisingly enough, it was unlocked, but I still had a hard time opening it.

After going inside, I found myself standing in a huge dark hall where I wasn't really able to see anything, despite the light coming from the small windows that couldn't be reached due to how high they were placed. I looked around me, trying to figure out where I should go next. I saw two staircases at the corner of the hall, one leading up and one leading down. I moved closer to them, contemplating which one I should try, or if I should even try any in the first place.

I came this far. There's no way I'm going back now, I thought to myself. Even my thoughts seemed loud in this awful silence that was surrounding me.

After a few seconds of hesitating, I decided to take the lower staircase first. I took one step at a time on the old, dirty stairs, feeling my whole body shake due to fear and low temperature. Since everything around me was pretty dark, I turned on the flashlight on my phone. I also noticed that I had no service here and that my phone battery was about to die.

Maybe I'm about to die, too, I thought, trying to shake that awful thought out of my head. If something happens to me here, no one will ever be able to find me.

It seemed as if those stairs were taking me to the center of the planet, but just as I was starting to wonder whete they were leading me, I suddenly faced another iron door. This one was even older and dirtier than the previous one, but at least it wasn't locked either.

It opened with a loud creak, which scared me a bit, but I proceedee walking into a long corridor, trying to ignore the dust and the spider's web on the ceiling.

I turned the flashlight off, because this corridor actually had some poor lighting on the ceiling that looked incredibly creepy. That was both a good and a bad sign.

It was good because that meant somebody was actually there.

And it was bad because... somebody was actually there.

This corridor had a few doors, but the one I was attracted to the most was the one at the very end – especially because it was slightly open.

I took a deep breath, walking as quietly as I possibly could. A part of me wanted to call Hongseok's name in hopes of him answering me, but I kept quiet. I didn't want to be the one to break this creepy silence.

*

I got to the door, shyly peaking trough, and what I saw inside was the most shocking sight yet.

Although a normal person would probably scream or run away, I just couldn't do so. After what I just saw, I wasn't even sure if I was ever normal to begin with.

I entered the room and moved closer to the creepy sight from earlier, not being able to move my eyes away from it.

Out of the four walls in this room, one of them was fully covered in different pictures of me.

And the wierd thing was, I didn't remember taking most of them.

Some of them were candid, and some of them were the pictures that were actually taken with me looking directly at the camera. But still, I didn't remember most of them.

Some of them looked really old and damaged, as if they had been taken by a really bad camera. Some of them were even in black and white.

And for things to be even stranger, the whole atmosphere on certain pictures seemed rather old, judging from the vintage close that I was wearing and all other details.

The more I was looking at the wall, the scarier it became. There were also some maps of the world that looked awfully familiar to the ones I saw in Hongseok's house. I moved closer to examine them, only to see a few different places marked on them, along with some years written.

China (1020)
America (1847)
Australia (1950)
South Korea (2020)

Those were only a few of the many marked places on the map.

Beside the map, I saw something that made me gasp. It was a beautiful painting that seemed really old, but what freaked me out was the fact that the portrait of a woman painted on it looked exactly like me.

Is this even real? I thought to myself, reaching out with my hand to touch it.

However, I was unexpectedly stopped by a sudden deep voice that made the blood in my veins freeze.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The voice said, and I immediately felt something dangerously sharp pressing against my neck.