The week following my bus pole experience became a silent torture. Every day was a new test to hide what was happening to me, that strange connection with the metal that manifested itself in tingling and unwelcome vibrations. I tried to keep my hands as far away from any metal surface as possible, but in a place as filled with steel and aluminum as Seoul, it was a constant battle that left me mentally exhausted.
At home, I moved with almost ridiculous caution around the fridge and microwave. I avoided touching the fridge door more than strictly necessary and used a rag to manipulate the microwave, making up lame excuses if anyone saw me. "Why are you using a rag to open the microwave, Hyuk?" my younger sister, Ji-woo, asked with her usual childlike curiosity. "Just... it's a little warm," I stammered, feeling my cheeks redden.
Mom, who has always been very observant, quickly noticed my strange behavior. During dinner, as I tried to cut a piece of meat with a fork that seemed to vibrate slightly in my hand, she looked at me with concern. "Are you okay, Hyuk?" she asked, her voice soft but inquisitive. "You seem a little... absent lately. Are you worried about something with school?" I shook my head, forcing a smile that I hoped looked convincing. "I'm just tired from exams, Mom. You know how it is." She narrowed her eyes, but eventually nodded, though she didn't seem entirely convinced. "Well, make sure you get enough rest."
At school, the situation was even more tense. In gym class, we were playing a game of basketball. I'm not exactly the best at sports, but I was trying to keep up. At one point, while attempting a shot, I pushed off too hard and my hand hit the metal rim with a thud. To my horror, the entire rim visibly shook, and one of the screws holding it to the wall came loose, and it fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. Several classmates turned to look at me curiously. "Watch out, Ryu Hyuk! What's wrong with you today?" exclaimed Min-joon, one of the most athletic kids in the class. I felt heat rise to my cheeks. "Sorry, guys," I said, trying to sound calm. "I think I tripped and landed on it by mistake." The gym teacher came over, examining the loose rim with a frown. "Be more careful, Ryu Hyuk. You could have hurt yourself." I nodded quickly, feeling immense relief that no one seemed to suspect anything else.
It was after that incident at the gym that I decided I desperately needed to try and control what was happening to me. I couldn't continue living with this constant fear that my strange abilities would manifest at the most inopportune moment. One afternoon, after making sure my parents and Ji-woo had gone out shopping, I locked myself in my room. I took a box of paper clips from my desk and carefully placed them on the table. I slowly reached out toward them, concentrating with all my might. I wanted to feel that familiar vibration, that connection with the metal, but this time, I wanted to direct it, control it. I wanted them to do whatever I wanted.
At first, absolutely nothing happened. The paper clips remained motionless on the table. Frustrated, I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to recall the strange sensation I had experienced on the bus pole. I tried to visualize the metal, its tiny atoms vibrating, and I focused on that energy I had felt flowing through me. Slowly, very slowly, I felt a slight tingling in my fingertips. Cautiously, I opened my eyes and saw that one of the paper clips had moved slightly—barely a millimeter, but it was enough. A wave of excitement and fear coursed through me at the same time. It was real. I wasn't imagining things. I wasn't going crazy.
I spent hours experimenting with the paper clips, trying to move them in different ways, bend them into strange shapes, even lift them off the desk. Progress was incredibly slow and erratic. Sometimes, I managed to move a clip a little, and other times, nothing happened no matter how hard I concentrated. But every small success, every minuscule movement of the metal, gave me a twinge of hope. Yet the mental effort it required was exhausting. By the end of the afternoon, my head was throbbing with a stabbing pain, and my eyes were burning from exhaustion.
Meanwhile, news about the Troubles became more and more frequent, although the media continued to treat them with almost suspicious caution. There was talk of "isolated incidents," "sightings of strange figures," and "unexplained damage" in different parts of the city. Rumors spread like wildfire among the students at my school. "Did you hear what happened near the park?" a friend asked me one day. "They say something strange attacked an old man." There was fear in his voice, a fear I shared. Some said they were animals mutated by pollution, others that they were scientific experiments gone wrong. No one seemed to have a coherent explanation.
One night, while walking home from a study session with a classmate, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. It was getting dark, and I took a shortcut down a dimly lit alley. That's when I saw it. A tall, twisted figure with long, spindly limbs that seemed to bend at impossible angles. Its form was vaguely humanoid, but grotesquely deformed, as if it had been stretched and twisted into an unnatural shape. The creature moved with surprising agility, slipping through the shadows as if it wasn't touching the ground. Before I could even scream or react, it disappeared behind some dumpsters, leaving me there, trembling with fear, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. I wasn't sure what I had seen, but the image seared itself into my mind with chilling clarity. Was that a Trouble? Was all this really happening?
I arrived home trembling, the image of that creature lurking in the shadows of the alley seared into my brain. I knew at that moment, with a certainty that chilled my blood, that I could no longer ignore what was happening. My strange abilities and the appearance of those monstrous creatures must be connected somehow. I needed answers, and I needed them now more than ever. I felt like I was on the verge of something big, something terrifying, and I didn't know who to turn to or what to do.
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