The Cursed Child

The curse

Seoul, South Korean, 2004 

The streets were empty. It had snowed heavily, casting a grey around the sky and making people rush indoors. There was not a single soul in the silent lane, surrounded on both sides by houses that looked like a slight bump might shatter them. The paint was chipping off, the balcony railings were all rusty and the windows of a lot of the houses were broken, covered by some newspapers or old dusty clothes to avoid the cold from seeping in. It was obvious that none of the houses that a heating system. 

In this part of Seoul, the nights were cold, dark, and lonely. People avoided the streets and even if they wanted to venture outside, they made sure never to do it alone. The neighborhood wasn't safe. How can it be when poverty covered the entire area? You couldn't see the poor from the broken windows, for they resided within these crippling walls. 

As the hands of the clock in one of the crumbling houses neared 11:30 pm, the soft tiptoes were heard; a sound distinct from the loud voices of the other residents of the house. These footsteps stopped upon reaching the distrustful railings of the small balcony, tiny enough to squeeze in one person. One tiny person. 

His right eye was blackened, but out in the cold, the injury felt much better. His skin had room to breathe in this tiny balcony. Putting his hands in front of his mouth, the small boy blew out a puff of hair, giggling to himself despite the lack of gloves and a hat, suitable for this chilly weather. 

The white snow was collecting down on the ground, making the concrete lane turn beautiful. It was quite possibly the most elegant state this road had been in the whole year. He put his hand on the railing to get a view of the entire row of houses on the left of him. The snow falling on the road, covering it, making it his own, and the damp red spreading across the snow was witnessed by the boy standing on his balcony. He could see the red spreading more and more with every passing second.

"Stop it!" a loud voice came from behind him, followed by the sound of something crashing against the wall. Whether it was a human or an object, the boy didn't want to know. He was more curious about the red in the snow. He leaned forward, the railings shivering as if the cold was affecting them. He leaned until his body was halfway across the railings, and he could see another body, the source of the red, on the snow.

The boy smiled, breathing out into the snow again. He remembered the memory of his father lying at the exact same place on the snow a few days back. His mother had had to take the help of the unkempt neighbors in getting him indoors. He thought of throwing the stone in the next house to get them out for helping the person lying on the snow but stopped when he noticed that the floor laid person had a company. A companion that wore the exact same clothes as the person on the floor. A beautiful woman. 

He continued to stare. 

The blackeye ached with his constant stare at a distant figure but he watched as the companion looked up, staring back at him. The eyes with no white in them. He would remember them forever. He might forget the way he shrieked, the way his father rushed out towards the balcony, his neighbors opened their door for the first time despite the cold, his mother being carried away by ambulance, his father turning his left eye black for not responding to him, but he will always remember those eyes with no white in them. 

..

London, United Kingdom, 2020

16th February, 12:03 AM 

There was a loud buzzing sound. The origin of it was unknown. Maybe it was coming from the overhead speakers or from his phone, maybe it was coming from the traffic outside. The young man, now twenty-two years of age, sat behind the solid wooden table as that shrill sound continued to be heard by him. He put his hands on his ears, trying to filter it out but he could still hear it: loud and clear.