❝ — seongnam unsolved , ★°。
she’s so lost in concentration that she can barely hear junhyung’s response (or is it that it had been so hushed that her ears could barely pick it up?), focused on getting the perfect shot, encapsulating all of the eeriness that the room radiates. it’s his second statement that catches her attention, and her movements suddenly stop as it registers. at first, she’d just thought it was someone with really small feet, since people have made comments about her own feet before, calling them small, and she is sometimes able to find shoes her size in the kids section, but the footsteps she’s capturing are smaller than even her own, and that’s quite the feat (no pun intended) to achieve for an adult-sized human being (is it even human, who knows?).
“wah~ you’re right,” she says, voice full of awe and wonder. that wonder and amazement is quickly replaced with fear again, however, once the questions start filling her mind. why is there just this one set of footprints? what child would be in a place like this all by his or herself, without adult supervision? why did it seem like the child was only pacing along the walls, seemingly without a destination or reason? she stands up slowly from her crouching position, turning to look back at junhyung with a mixture of fear and confusion. she opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out.
then comes a sound to pierce through the silence. it comes from neither of them, though, but rather from somewhere within the room. she sucks in a sharp breath, holding it there, as if her own breathing would disturb or anger whatever it was that made the noise. it was soft, seemingly muffled, like a baby crying or some kind of mewl. she slowly releases the breath she was holding, not because she’s suddenly gathered her courage, but because she couldn’t hold it any longer without passing out. “i— i think it came from the walls…”
she whirls around, panning her camera along the walls in search of any kind of sign, but the light from her camera isn’t enough to capture everything. her eyes then shoot up toward the singular lightbulb that hangs above them, and the cord attached to it. according to what she’s heard, this house has been abandoned for quite some time now; the electricity couldn’t still be running, could it? there’s only one way to find out, though, so she reaches up, attempting to reach the cord, but there’s one caveat—she’s too short. huffing at this turn of events, she turns to junhyung again, voice shaky as she asks, “can— can you try to turn on the light?”
there’s something that amazes him as much as it appalls him — how yoohyeon reacts to their bizarre findings with awe and not fear. how does she go “wah~” when all he wants to do is grab her hand and run out of there, pronto. but then, he recalls the person that dragged him into this abandoned building, that was, for the record, only getting creepier by the second, and it all made sense. she was not like most people — she thrived on exploring the occult, regardless of how terrifying their current situation was. in fact, to her, it’s probably the more terrifying, the better.
junhyung is in a dilemma — does he hope for their little “excursion” (that he was starting to regret) to be a fruitful one, solely for the sake of the video, or does he secretly wish they’ll fail and get out of there safe and sound? the film student in him actually hopes for the former, because he knows how good it feels to gather great footage and he does want that for yoohyeon but hey, they’ve got to get out of there alive first, right? what use is getting all these footage and evidence of these... non-human entities, if they couldn’t even get out alive to share what they’ve discovered?
a sudden sound breaks the silence in the room and he instinctively grabs onto yoohyeon’s arm, pretty much hugging it with his whole being. he doesn’t say anything, unsure if it was safe to make his presence known to whatever company they have — if they even have any and this time, he’s really hoping that they don’t, and that it was just a sound that came from an insect or mice, gross but whatever — anything but that.
he gulps, leaning in to whisper shakily in yoohyeon’s ear, “t-the wall? like, inside it or behind it?” whatever sense of logic he had clearly wasn’t active in his present state of mind but could you blame him? they were possibly (but hopefully not) in the presence of something horrifying and as if it wasn’t already difficult enough just standing in that room (which was starting to get a little cold or was it just him breaking out in cold sweat?), he was now tasked with switching on the light that again, looks like it came right out of a horror movie with its cord hanging down ominously. seriously, the lights always look like that in horror movies!
despite his internal struggle, he has decided to take on the task of switching on the light. well, he has to, he is the taller one, after all. and he did come here to help her so, it’s about time he stepped up and proved himself a worthy partner — with a condition, of course. “ok, I will,” he swallows before nodding bravely, “but you have to hold my hand. or let me grab onto your arm, whatever,” he adds, tugging her arm as he takes a small, meek step towards the light. “just as long as I’m not alone.”