Kang Minjae didn't go to class.
Not because he wanted to skip.
But because he couldn't afford to.
She had his phone.
And now, he had no idea what else she might take.
He paced his dorm room like a trapped animal, glancing between the mirror, the desk, and the bed. Every object seemed suspicious now. Every shadow too deep. Every sound too delayed.
He reread the note on the mirror—"I have your voice."
It wasn't just a metaphor.
She had taken his ability to reach out, call for help, or even record his reality.
Minjae had become isolated.
And that's exactly what she wanted.
But she made one mistake.
She left behind a riddle.
And Minjae wasn't as naive as she believed.
⸻
He sat down with his timeline notebook, flipping back to the cryptic message again:
"Each room you've entered is a story I've rewritten.
The order is wrong.
But the sequence is true.
Find the word in the gaps you don't recall."
He highlighted the phrase: The order is wrong. But the sequence is true.
That meant the rooms, or his memories of them, were shuffled.
But if he could unshuffle them… maybe he'd find what she left hidden.
He spread out multiple pages: notes on his daily movements, gaps of missing time, timestamps from campus logs, class schedules, even cafeteria receipts.
Then he noticed something strange.
At first, it looked random. But when he marked all the time gaps over the past three days—each one was a prime number of minutes.
3 minutes.
5 minutes.
7 minutes.
11 minutes.
13.
It wasn't just a coincidence.
Prime gaps.
She was giving him numbers.
Could they correspond to letters?
He flipped to a fresh page and started assigning the gaps to letters:
3 = C
5 = E
7 = G
11 = K
13 = M
Together: C-E-G-K-M
Nonsense at first glance.
But then he noticed something else.
The notes he'd received—each one had a different ink color.
The black one with the quote from Pascal.
The crimson message with the riddle.
The yellow sticky on the mirror.
Three notes.
Three color codes.
Three layers.
Black. Red. Yellow.
He began to suspect there was a deeper pattern.
He pulled out the Pascal quote again:
"The heart has reasons that reason cannot understand."
And the riddle:
"Each room you've entered is a story I've rewritten…"
And now the mirror note:
"I have your voice."
He whispered the three messages aloud. Slowly. Listening for rhythm. Tone. Anything out of place.
And that's when he heard it.
Each note had one odd inflection point.
One word that didn't quite match the tone.
"Reason."
"Wrong."
"Voice."
Reason. Wrong. Voice.
His brain clicked.
She was weaving a sentence.
Could it be…
"Reason is wrong without voice"
or
"Without voice, reason is wrong"?
No—there was still something missing.
He leaned back, letting the silence of the room wrap around him.
Then he remembered.
The very first note—the one on the library desk—had ended with a line:
"It's already begun."
So far, he had:
• "It's already begun."
• "Reason cannot understand."
• "The order is wrong."
• "I have your voice."
Together, it painted a terrifying picture.
She was planning something. And Minjae was already in the middle of it.
⸻
He left the dorm and headed straight to the school library.
Not because he needed to borrow a book.
But because it was the first location where her presence had touched him.
The starting point.
He went to the same table where he'd found the envelope.
Sat down.
Stared at the wood grain.
And then he noticed something he hadn't before.
Underneath the table, carved in a rough spiral, were letters etched faintly into the wood. Almost invisible.
His pulse quickened.
He bent lower and read it carefully.
One word.
"MIRROR."
He froze.
No way.
Had it been there the entire time?
He sprinted back to the dorm. Up the stairs. Past students who looked at him like he'd lost it.
He stood before his mirror.
Breathing hard.
Then he did something he hadn't thought of before.
He removed the mirror from the wall.
Behind it—was a slit in the wallpaper. A small square cut out.
Inside it—
Was a photograph.
Of him, sleeping.
Taken from less than two feet away.
And written behind it, in that same elegant script:
"You left the window open.
I only borrowed time.
Shall I give it back?"
Minjae staggered backward, the photo trembling in his hands.
His thoughts screamed.
She had stood right there.
Watching him. Taking pictures. Leaving clues.
And he had never known.
He collapsed into the chair, his fingers trembling.
He couldn't go to the police. There were no fingerprints. No face. No trace.
She had been careful.
But now, something had changed.
She wanted him to know.
Not just that she was watching.
But that he couldn't stop her.
Unless—he started playing back.
Minjae tucked the photo inside a notebook, stared at his reflection in the mirror—and for the first time, whispered aloud:
"I'll find you."
And somewhere, hidden in the silence, a woman smiled.
⸻
[End of chapter 7]
⸻
A/N:
The clues are no longer passive. Minjae is now entering the mind game Seo Yoonji has meticulously laid out. With her gradually breaking his connection to the world—taking his phone, altering his reality—she's forcing him into a psychological labyrinth. But Minjae is no fool. The decoding of her riddle has only just begun.
What is the word in the silence?
And will Minjae take the next step before she decides the game is over?