Chapter 12: He Didn't Hear It

Yeo-reum's feet hit the cold floor before she was awake.

The alarm shrieked through the whole brick villa, and doors were banging open on every landing.

She pulled her hoodie over her pajamas, grabbed her sketchbook and her phone, and ran out into the stairwell.

Smoke, thin and gray, was curling up the middle of the stairs from the ground floor.

The neighbor with the cabbage, in a quilted robe, was already on the third-floor landing, shouting, "Out! Everybody out!"

Yeo-reum ran two steps down, and then she stopped.

402's door was shut.

Nobody had come out of 402.

She went back up and pounded on it with her fist.

"Jin-woo!"

Nothing.

"Jin-woo, wake up! The building's on fire!"

The alarm drowned her voice completely.

She pressed the bell, over and over.

She stopped pressing the bell.

She laid her palm flat on his door instead, and felt it shake with the alarm.

He would not hear her knock either, and she was out of time to wonder why.

Something cold came down over her, from her scalp to her heels.

"No," she said aloud. "No, no, no."

She ran back into 401, through the studio and out onto the balcony.

She put one foot on the railing, swung her leg over the panel, and fell onto Jin-woo's side with a thud.

The sliding door was unlocked.

It was always unlocked.

She hauled it open and ran into the dark.

He was in the low bed, face down, one arm thrown over his head.

The room was lit by a pulse of red from the stairwell, flashing under the door.

On the shelf over the bed, the gray case lay open and empty.

On the pillow beside his ear lay a blue foam earplug box, unopened.

"Jin-woo!"

She grabbed his shoulder, and shook it.

He didn't move.

She shook harder, and shouted straight into his ear.

Nothing.

She took his face in both hands and turned it toward her, and his eyes snapped open.

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