Do-jin woke to the sound of water droplets falling from the morgue ceiling. His head throbbed as if a solid nail had been driven into his left temple. He raised a hand to his left eye—there was not only blood, but an absolute whiteness, a veil of visual snow that refused to fade, as though his eye had become an old television screen that had lost its signal forever.
His gaze shifted to the antique radio resting atop So-ah's chest. He lifted the device slowly, and in that moment, memory dragged him back to the day everything changed—five years ago—when he had been nothing more than a young man full of life, studying telecommunications engineering, obsessed with the idea that sounds never truly disappear, but instead transform into dormant energy drifting through space.
It had been in a narrow alley untouched by sunlight, inside an antique shop heavy with the scent of dust and time. There, he found the device. Its wood was unlike any earthly material—dark as charcoal, warm to the touch, with the texture of human skin. The first time his fingers brushed its dials, he heard no music, only a sharp gasp that shook him to his core.
"This device does not catch what's in the air," the shop's owner had told him—a blind old man whose eyes never blinked. He asked for no money. Instead, he said something Do-jin would only understand now:"Listening to the truth is never free. You will barter your senses for the voices of the dead."
On his first night with the radio, Do-jin turned the dial—and suddenly, the voice of his grandfather, dead for years, emerged. It was not a clear voice, but an echo of his final moments, a dying breath carrying a fragmented confession about a family secret never fully revealed. That was when Do-jin felt the link—a sharp stab in his cerebral cortex, as though the device had sunk claws into his nervous system and fused with it. From that day on, the world began to lose its color and flavor. Food turned gray on his tongue. Warmth faded into absence. And now—his left eye was gone, another offering claimed.
Do-jin returned to the present. The morgue felt smaller now, tighter, and the body before him had become a heavy trust. He understood then that the man in the black coat had not come for the corpse—but for the frequency it carried, to erase it from existence and protect whoever had sent him.
He carefully covered So-ah's face, then pulled on his heavy coat and slipped the radio into a battered leather bag. He could no longer remain in the basement. The next confrontation would not take place in darkness—but in the heart of a city rotting with corruption.
He exited through the morgue's back door, cold wind slapping his face. Through his functioning right eye, the city appeared as a forest of false lights. Through his left, it was nothing but distorted gray vibrations. His destination was clear.
The bridge.
The place where So-ah had fallen.
As he walked down the street, the radio inside the bag began to emit a faint static—a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat. And the closer he drew to a certain area, the sharper the static became.
"You're trying to tell me something, aren't you?" Do-jin whispered, tightening his grip on the bag.
Suddenly, a luxurious black car came to a stop just meters away. The window slid down slowly. Expensive cigar smoke drifted out, followed by a familiar voice that shook the foundations of his memory:
"Park Do-jin… are you still chasing lost voices?Or are they the ones chasing you now?"
Do-jin's body went rigid.The voice did not belong to the man in the black coat.
It belonged to someone he knew all too well from his professional past—someone who had been the reason he left university, and the reason he became a gravekeeper.