ATTEW – Chapter 17

People are, after all, just animals with highly developed instincts. Someone once said that when an unusually sharp sense of foreboding strikes, the odds are high that something bad—an accident or incident—is about to happen.

Maybe that was true.

A little past 2 a.m., Eunho woke up and sat bolt upright when she realized both sides of her were empty. Just moments ago, Gyueon had been sleeping to her left, Eunsil to her right. Yet now, less than two hours after they’d fallen asleep, both were gone.

‘’What is this sick feeling?’

The air felt cold enough to raise goosebumps. Eunho hugged her shoulders and stood. Outside the window, the snow was still coming down in thick, heavy sheets.

“Where did they both…?”

Scanning the room, Eunho suddenly remembered waking a few nights ago at the smallest rustle. Back then, Eunshil had seemed to leave the room and come back to lie down again.

“Eunshil… where did you go…?”

‘“Hmm… yeah.”

“Did you go to the bathroom?”

Half-asleep, Eunho hadn’t even registered what Eunshil answered. Eunshil had hummed like she’d been doing lately, and Eunho had mumbled for her to sleep and drifted off again.

Before falling asleep that night, Eunho had noticed the clock: three in the morning.

Which meant…

If Eunshil was waking up at the same time every night, this was exactly the right hour for her to be up and moving.

Why was she only thinking of that now?

Why did she suddenly feel certain—as if it had always been true—that Eunshil had been leaving her bed at dawn every day lately?

That night, Eunho had brushed it off. ‘Bathroom. Water. Just one of those times she wakes up.’ Eunshil had always had nights like that.

But this was different.

This feeling—this instant chill that snapped sleep clean off her skin—spread like mold blooming in a damp corner, crawling through her head until everything tasted stale and rotten.

“…”

Eunho knew this.

She knew the scent of approaching misery.

The faint, fishy reek started somewhere unseen. The sensation of something grabbing the back of her neck. The sticky heaviness that made her hesitate to take the next step.

She begged herself it was all imagination.

So she slipped out of the room.

If she didn’t prove the feeling wrong, she wouldn’t be able to sleep again. She wanted to find the two of them somewhere inside the center, bring them back, lie down, and finally exhale.

She could guess where Gyueon might be.

Maybe she’d woken up and gone to the living room to wait for her oppa. From the living room, you could see the entrance clearly. Or maybe she’d gone to the director’s office—where there was a phone—because she’d been so desperate she’d woken just to try calling again, even though she already knew it wouldn’t connect.

Or maybe, as her oppa said, she’d woken up and started wandering.

If so, Eunho had to get her back in bed quickly and lay her down—call her name, soothe her, make the world steady again.

She moved down the dead-quiet hallway, fingertips sliding along the wall in the dark.

The entrance sat at the center: to the left were four large bedrooms for the children, one small bedroom Eunho shared with Eunshil, the shared bath, and the toilet.

To the right were the wide living room where everyone ate and studied, the supplies room, the office, and the director’s room.

The toilet was empty.

The living room—lit only by faint streetlight through the windows—held no sign of anyone, either.

Then the only places left were on the right side: the office and the director’s room.

Eunho peered into the supplies room, searching for any trace—

—and that was when she heard it.

A thin sound from far away, scraping lightly at her eardrums.

“….”

It sounded—almost—like a cat crying.

But there was laughter in it, too, now and then.

And that laughter…

It was like something she’d buried in the deepest part of her memory.

A sound from that time she’d lived as a boy. That time she’d waited for her mother’s “work” to end with her hands over her ears, and still couldn’t block it out.

Eunho refused it.

That sound didn’t belong in a childcare center.

It couldn’t.

‘Please.’ Let it be a stray kitten that had slipped inside to escape the cold. Let it be Eunshil secretly turning on the TV when no one was looking.

It had to be.

Swallowing hard, Eunho saw it—

The office door cracked open just slightly.

The office is at the very end of the hallway. The one directly across from Eunho’s room.

Her eyes locked onto the thin, ugly gap in the dark as she tried to stomp down the rising, poisonous images in her head.

But then—

“Feels good?”

A middle-aged man’s rough voice cut through, clear as a blade.

Eunho froze.

“Good, you fucking bitch.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. After Seonghui died, every teacher at Ttaseuhan Son had been replaced. Before, there had been staff who lived on-site with the children. Now they all commuted in and out.

Which meant there was only one man in this building who could speak like that.

And only one adult woman—

Eunho.

And—

“….”

Eunshil.

Both of them are barely adults. And Eunshil—who functioned at the level of a seven-year-old.

Whether he was calling one of the children “bitch” or calling someone else that, it didn’t matter—either way, it was a nightmare Eunho couldn’t bear.

She tried to claw the dread out of her chest. She tried to breathe like this wasn’t real.

One step.

Then another.

And with each step, she heard it more clearly—

That bright, simple laugh. A laugh she knew.

“Stupid bitch—at least you’ve got a decent pair of tits. Yeah? Feels nice to knead.”

“Mm. Mm.”

“Let’s see… last time you learned how to play with your boobs, so… what should we learn today. I think it’s about time we get serious. Huh? Spread your legs. I’ll teach you something good.”

The low voice sliding out through the half-closed door felt like a snake.

If snakes had voices, it would be that—slick and coaxing, a whisper that wasn’t human so much as something demonic.

“Where’d a thing like you come from, huh? Too dumb to tell anyone anything, but your body’s ripe—perfect to play with. Look at you. You don’t even know I’m insulting you, you’re just saying it feels good.”

By then, Eunho was right in front of the door.

She tried to steady her breath, tried to hold back the fury surging up like lava. For a flash, she saw Hwajin—once, maybe, soft as petals, pure in the way children were—before men crushed her with words and fists.

“Look at you laughing. Yeah? Laugh, because it’s good. You even know what this means? You know what it means when I touch you like this?”

Then—

Eunshil’s laughter rang out, unmistakable.

And something in Eunho snapped.

She flung the office door open.

“…!”

In the pitch-dark office, Park Gyedeuk—spinning chair under him—shot to his feet.

One hand still clamped around Eunshil’s leg.

Reality slammed into Eunho hard enough to make her teeth ache.

Eunshil sat up on Seonghui’s old desk—her soft pajama dress unbuttoned all the way, her pale breasts exposed, her legs spread, smiling as if she didn’t understand a single thing happening to her.

Eunho’s vision doubled.

Eunshil overlaid with Hwajin.

And on Park Gyedeuk’s panicked face—

“….”

Gilsanghyeon.

Not his face exactly, not the details—just the tattooed wrist, the swaggering gait, the laughing cruelty: the dog-tattoo bastard who’d clawed open Eunho’s life.

Her fists clenched on their own.

Old rage—rotted and packed tight for years—burst upward, hot enough to scorch her throat.

Eunho lunged, roaring.

“You fucking piece of shit!”

The curse nine-year-old Eunho had wanted to throw at Gilsanghyeon—ten years too late—finally tore free.

That night, when the whole country was buried under record-breaking snowfall.

When someone waited for an oppa who had to come.

When someone staggered through a snowfield to get to his sister.

When someone dreamed, at last, of a future as a college freshman one year late—

And when someone else, sneering, crushed all of it in his fist—

The thing Eunho had feared most—what she’d thought she’d escaped—

fell over her again.

Misery surged in.

Hell kicked down the door.