CHAPTER 4: The Man With No Face
581 Words
Raen Seo hated hospitals.
Not because of the smell of antiseptic or the silent judgment of fluorescent lights.
But because they always reminded him of the last time he cried—and the first time he realized monsters didn’t live under beds.
They wore uniforms. Smiled. Shook your hand.
Now, inside the dim hallway of the basement-level archives, he was back in the place he avoided most.
“Elara, tell me again,” he said as they walked, side by side. “Why did you request this case file?”
She glanced at him, her expression unreadable. “Because the new victim’s dental record matches a missing person from five years ago. A woman declared dead. But no body was ever found.”
“And?”
Elara stopped. Her hand hovered over the metal cabinet marked 2019: UNSOLVED / ABANDONED.
“I examined that case as an intern,” she said quietly. “And the body we found yesterday has my original notes carved inside her femur.”
Raen blinked. “That’s not possible.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
She slid the drawer open. Paper files. A flash drive. A photo with edges yellowing.
The woman from the morgue. The same face. Only... this time, her eyes were open. Alive.
Raen picked up the flash drive and plugged it into his laptop. Surveillance footage, grainy but clear enough. The same woman walked into a hotel. She never walked out.
At 03:17 a.m., the hallway lights flickered—then a figure appeared behind her.
Not walking. Just… there.
Raen froze the frame.
It had no face. Just skin. Smooth, featureless, like clay.
“You see it too?” Elara whispered.
He nodded. “This thing isn’t human.”
“No,” she said. “But it follows human rules. One victim a week. All women. All connected.”
Raen looked up at her. “Connected how?”
Elara hesitated. Then slowly pulled down the collar of her sweater. The scar on her collarbone—same place the victim had the number 9—was shaped…
Not randomly.
It was a 7.
Raen stared at her, breath shallow. “You never told me.”
“I didn’t remember until last night,” she admitted. “Not everything. Just… flashes. A dark room. A voice. My own heartbeat too loud.”
Raen stepped back, heart pounding. “That means—”
“I’m the seventh.”
He swallowed. “And if yesterday’s victim was number 9, then—”
“There’s someone between us,” she said. “And they’re next.”
Later that Night
Elara couldn’t sleep.
She hadn’t slept well in years, but this was worse. The numbers. The Polaroids. The photo of herself not yet taken.
She kept the lights off. Sat at her desk. Sketched from memory.
A hallway.
Her own face.
And the figure behind her.
Each stroke of charcoal brought it closer to life.
Faceless. Still. Watching.
A knock.
Elara flinched.
Not the door.
The window.
She lived on the fourth floor.
Her breath caught. Slowly, she turned. Nothing.
She reached for her lamp. Turned it on.
The sketch was gone.
In its place…
A new Polaroid.
She inched forward. Picked it up with shaking fingers.
It was her again.
But in this one, she was smiling.
Beside her—Raen.
His hand on her back.
And behind them both…
The faceless man.
In red ink, a number scrawled across the bottom:
7
- Writer
