Chapter 5 — Night Shift Eyes
The walk home should have been ordinary.
That was the thought that kept repeating in Han Jae-in’s mind as he stepped off the campus path and onto the narrow street that led toward his apartment. The sky had already darkened into that deep blue that came after sunset but before night fully settled, the air cooling just enough to make him aware of his own breathing. The streetlights hadn’t all turned on yet.
Some flickered. Others hummed faintly, casting uneven halos on the pavement.
Ordinary. Predictable. Quiet.
After the chaos of the literature club room—the overlapping voices, the tension that never quite surfaced into words—he wanted nothing more than silence. Real silence. The kind that didn’t feel like a held breath.
For several minutes, he got it.
No thoughts brushed against his consciousness. No intrusive impulses or emotional spikes pressed into his awareness. Just the sound of his shoes against the concrete, the distant traffic from the main road, and the faint rustle of trees lining the sidewalk.
He told himself that this was how things were supposed to be.
Then he felt it.
Not a voice. Not even a thought.
A presence.
It was subtle, almost deniable, the way you could sense someone standing behind you without hearing footsteps. The hairs on the back of his neck rose before his mind could supply a reason. His pace slowed without him realizing it, steps growing more cautious as his attention sharpened.
He glanced at the reflection in a darkened storefront window.
For a moment, he thought he imagined her.
She stood near the convenience store across the street, half-hidden by the shadow of the awning. Tall. Still. Watching the street rather than him—at least, that was what it looked like at first glance. Her posture was relaxed in a way that suggested nothing and everything at once. Not waiting. Not wandering.
Simply… present.
Black hair fell straight down her back, barely stirring in the evening air. Her clothes were plain, practical—dark jacket, jeans, nothing that stood out. If he hadn’t already been hyperaware of people lately, he might have dismissed her as another student heading home from a late class.
But his chest tightened anyway.
The absence of sound in his head was wrong.
He took another step. Then another.
As if reacting to his movement, the world shifted.
A drunk man staggered out of the convenience store, nearly colliding with Jae-in as he crossed the sidewalk. The man smelled sharply of alcohol, eyes unfocused, muttering something under his breath. He bumped into Jae-in’s shoulder hard enough to jolt him sideways.
“Hey—” Jae-in started automatically, more surprised than angry.
He never finished the sentence.
The girl moved.
She crossed the distance between them in a single smooth step, positioning herself between Jae-in and the drunk man with a precision that felt rehearsed. Her hand came up—not to strike, not to shove—but to stop. Palm out. Close enough to the man’s chest that he froze mid-stumble.
The drunk blinked, confused.
For the first time, sound flooded Jae-in’s mind.
Not words. Not sentences.
‘Threat.’
‘Unstable.’
‘Remove.’
The thoughts weren’t loud. They didn’t scream or spiral. They arrived fully formed, sharp and efficient, like bullet points stripped of anything unnecessary.
The man laughed awkwardly, taking a step back.
“Relax, I wasn’t—”
The girl’s gaze lifted to meet his.
Her eyes were flat. Not angry. Not emotional.
Assessing.
The man faltered, the humor draining from his face as something primal registered. He raised his hands in surrender, backing away.
“Sorry. My bad.”
He turned and hurried down the street, footsteps uneven but retreating.
The girl watched him go.
Only when he was out of sight did the tension ease—slightly.
The thoughts receded into something quieter.
‘Safe.’
Jae-in stood there, heart pounding, trying to process what had just happened. The entire interaction had lasted seconds. No one had raised their voice. No one had touched anyone.
And yet, he felt like he’d just witnessed something far more dangerous than a simple confrontation.
“Thank you,” he said before he could overthink it.
The word felt inadequate, but it was all he had.
The girl turned to him.
Up close, she looked even more withdrawn than she had from a distance. Pale skin. Dark circles beneath her eyes that suggested late nights or lack of sleep. Her expression was neutral, almost blank, but her gaze lingered on him a fraction longer than necessary.
For the briefest moment, another thought surfaced.
‘He noticed.’
It wasn’t triumphant. It wasn’t joyful.
It was… confirmed.
She gave a short nod in response to his thanks, then stepped back, increasing the distance between them as if the interaction were already complete. Without another word, she turned and walked away down the opposite side of the street.
Jae-in watched her go.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty.
It hummed.
He waited for the thoughts to return—to continue, to explain, to escalate the way Yuri’s and Chaerin’s always did once they started. But nothing came. No lingering emotions. No possessive loops. Just the faint afterimage of something sharp and focused that had already moved on.
His breathing slowed.
Too slowly.
By the time he resumed walking, the street felt different. Narrower. Less forgiving. Every shadow seemed deeper, every reflective surface more noticeable. He found himself glancing behind him more often, even though he knew she had gone the other way.
Or had she?
He reached his apartment building without incident, unlocking the door and stepping inside his small studio. The familiar clutter greeted him—books stacked unevenly on the desk, a half-finished mug of cold coffee near the sink, laundry he’d forgotten to fold. The space felt safe by virtue of being known.
He locked the door anyway.
The silence pressed in.
That night, he couldn’t sleep.
He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment over and over again. The speed of her movement. The way the drunk man had backed down without protest. The simplicity of her thoughts.
Not fear. Not affection.
Protection.
‘Threat. Removed. Safe.’
There had been no question of whether he wanted help. No hesitation. No emotional negotiation.
It unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
Around midnight, his phone buzzed on the bedside table.
Chaerin.
A message lit up the screen.
[Did you get home okay?]
He hesitated before replying, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He hadn’t told her he was walking home alone. He hadn’t told Yuri either.
[Yeah] he typed back. [Just got in].
Three dots appeared immediately.
[Good] she replied. [I was worried. The streets get weird at night.]
He exhaled slowly, setting the phone face down.
Her thoughts weren’t there. Of course they weren’t. Distance muted everything. And yet, he could almost imagine the way her emotions would be cycling if she were nearby—concern sliding into relief, relief into self-reproach for worrying too much, self-reproach into renewed attachment.
Predictable.
That was the word he’d never use out loud.
He rolled onto his side, trying to force sleep.
Instead, his mind returned to the girl from the street.
Kuroe Hana.
He remembered her name from class lists and roll calls, spoken rarely and always followed by a pause. A transfer student. Quiet. Always seated at the back, eyes forward, notebook pristine and untouched by idle doodles. He’d noticed her before without really noticing her, filed her away as another background presence in a life already too crowded.
Now, the memory rearranged itself.
She hadn’t been watching the street.
She’d been watching him.
The realization sat heavy in his chest, not because it frightened him outright, but because it felt… inevitable. As if this, too, had been waiting its turn.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, he drifted into a shallow, restless sleep.
When he woke, it was to the sound of his alarm and the sensation of being observed.
The feeling vanished the moment he sat up.
Morning light filtered through the curtains, harmless and pale.
His apartment was exactly as he’d left it. The door was still locked. Nothing was out of place.
He laughed under his breath, rubbing a hand over his face.
Get it together, he told himself.
The walk to campus the next day was uneventful.
No thoughts intruded. No sudden movements caught his eye.
The world seemed to have reset itself to its default state—students rushing to class, bikes weaving through foot traffic, conversations overlapping in a comfortable blur.
By the time he reached the literature building, he’d almost convinced himself that the previous night had been an anomaly.
Almost.
He took his usual seat in the seminar room, feeling the familiar shift as Seo Yuri settled nearby. Her presence came with its own subtle pressure, her thoughts already aligning and organizing the space around him.
‘He looks tired. Did he sleep? I should remind him to rest.’
He ignored it as best he could, opening his notebook and focusing on the lecture.
Halfway through class, his attention drifted.
He didn’t turn around.
He didn’t need to.
Kuroe Hana sat in the back row.
Her posture was unchanged from every other day—straight-backed, hands folded neatly on the desk. From the outside, she looked like she always did: detached, uninterested, almost bored.
The thoughts reached him faintly, like signals traveling across a long distance.
‘No immediate threats.’
‘Environment stable.’
‘Distance acceptable.’
He swallowed.
She wasn’t thinking about him.
She was thinking about everything around him.
When the class ended, he lingered longer than necessary, pretending to organize his notes. Yuri packed her bag methodically, offering to walk with him as she always did.
Chaerin waved enthusiastically from the doorway, already making plans out loud.
Hana left without looking back.
The silence she left behind followed him.
That evening, as he walked home again, he found himself
scanning the street instinctively. His steps slowed near the convenience store, eyes flicking toward the awning.
Empty.
No presence. No thoughts.
And yet, his shoulders refused to relax.
When he reached his apartment, he stood outside the door for a long moment before unlocking it, listening to the quiet hum of the building. Somewhere above him, someone laughed. A door slammed. Life went on.
Inside, he leaned back against the door, closing his eyes.
He understood something now that he hadn’t before.
Silence wasn’t absence.
It was resolution.
Whatever Kuroe Hana had decided the night before, she had already acted on it—or filed it away as complete. The lack of noise didn’t mean she had lost interest.
It meant she didn’t need to think about it anymore.
That realization settled deep, heavy and inescapable.
For the first time since the thoughts had begun, Han Jae-in felt something colder than fear.
He felt seen.
