Soundless Music
Chapter 3: The Walls That Listened
The hallways of Hwarang High were no longer safe.
Not because of violence.
Not because of ghosts.
Because they were awake.
The walls weren't just holding up the building anymore.
They were recording.
Breathing.
Listening.
---
Eura didn't sleep that night.
She spent hours playing and replaying the fragment of her brother's voice.
The one stored in Room 4.
Trying to decode it.
Trying to remember what she was never meant to remember.
The melody kept pulling at her.
But something else haunted her worse.
Jaewon's face.
That moment.
That flicker in his expression.
He knew something.
More than he let on.
So when morning came, she didn't text him.
She didn't go to Room Zero.
She didn't even eat.
She went straight to the basement archives.
This time, not through the music wing.
Through the east stairwell — the one chained off since last semester.
She broke the chain.
Didn't care.
What she found down there wasn't just dust and old yearbooks.
It was a black box.
Locked in a glass case.
Unlabeled.
Untouched.
Except for one tag taped to it:
"DO NOT PLAY. Room 27."
---
"Eura?"
She turned.
Jaewon stood in the stairwell behind her, panting.
"I followed you. What are you doing down here?"
She didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Why didn't you tell me you were in the Ghost Club?"
He blinked.
Then slowly stepped inside.
"You looked it up."
"I looked everything up. Including last year's final club photo. You were there. Standing behind Sejin Moon. The club president who vanished."
He didn't deny it.
"You told me you just helped with audio," she continued.
"But you were there. In the photo. In the last known photo before she disappeared."
Jaewon sighed.
Walked closer to the glass case.
"I didn't lie," he said.
"I just didn't tell you everything."
Eura's voice was tight.
"Why?"
"Because truth makes it real."
He looked at the black box.
"That's Room 27's core tape. It's where they stored everything the Silence didn't want the world to hear."
"Like my brother?"
He nodded once.
"Like everyone."
---
He turned toward her.
Eyes heavy with a kind of guilt that couldn't be explained in words.
"Sejin wanted to release the full audio," he said.
"She thought it could undo the effect. Wake the voices. Bring them back."
"But she disappeared."
"She didn't vanish," Jaewon said, voice barely a whisper.
"She became part of the sound."
"What do you mean—"
"I mean if you play that tape… and you're not ready…"
He looked at her.
Eyes shining.
"You won't die.
You'll dissolve. Into a waveform."
Eura stared at the box.
So small.
So harmless-looking.
But inside it were the voices of all those who had been erased.
She felt her fingers twitch.
It wasn't just about her brother anymore.
It was about all of them.
The ones no one remembered.
The ones who never got a name in the headlines.
The ones who simply… stopped being real.
Eura looked at Jaewon.
"What if we played only part of it?"
He flinched.
"You're insane."
"I'm serious. What if we just decoded the first few seconds? We'd know what's in there without fully releasing it."
Jaewon's silence was answer enough.
He'd already tried that.
---
They brought the box to the school's old soundproof lab.
The one buried under the physics building.
Abandoned for years.
Eura watched as Jaewon carefully connected the black box to an analog reel-to-reel converter.
It clicked.
Buzzed faintly.
"Whatever happens," he said, "do not repeat anything you hear."
"Why not?"
"Because that's how it spreads. The melody completes itself by memory. If you remember even one measure... it can finish the rest without you."
Eura nodded.
The reel turned.
A voice played.
Not her brother's.
Not Sejin's.
It was hers.
From years ago.
> "I want to be forgotten so no one can hurt me again."
She gasped.
"I never said that," she whispered.
"Yes," Jaewon said. "You did. But you don't remember."
"Why is my voice in Room 27?"
He looked at her.
Then quietly said:
"Because you've been inside already. Before."
The reel spun.
Her own voice.
Spoken in a tone she didn't recognize.
> "I want to be forgotten so no one can hurt me again."
It echoed through the lab's sealed silence like a confession carved into a cathedral wall.
Like someone had ripped it straight from her throat without permission.
And Eura…
She didn't remember ever saying those words.
Not once.
Not even close.
---
Jaewon shut the reel down.
The tape snapped back into stillness.
But the sound hung in the air.
"Tell me the truth," she said.
Eyes locked on him.
"I am," he said.
"You don't remember, because Room 27 doesn't allow memory. That's how it stays hidden."
She shook her head.
"No. You said I've been inside already. When? Why?"
Jaewon hesitated.
Then sat down on the cold tile floor.
"Two years ago," he said quietly.
"You auditioned to be the youngest ever school composer. They said you were… unnaturally talented. Beyond training. You wrote a melody that made people cry without knowing why."
Eura blinked.
"What melody?"
He gave her a look.
She understood.
The one that keeps returning.
The one her brother said would 'complete itself.'
"You called it 'Soundless,'" Jaewon said.
"It wasn't just music. It was a fragment from Room 27. You composed something that already existed inside the silence."
Her stomach churned.
"Then why don't I remember composing it?"
Jaewon looked her straight in the eyes.
"Because you never did. You just… heard it. And wrote it down."
---
The floor felt colder now.
Like it was reaching up to claim her.
"So my brother used it in his livestream—"
"And that finished the first movement," Jaewon said.
"He wasn't supposed to. It triggered the memory lock in you. That's when everything began shifting. You started hearing things again. Remembering things that don't fit."
Eura stood up abruptly.
Backed away from the reel.
"This doesn't make sense. I would've known—"
"No."
He cut her off gently.
"You wouldn't have. That's how Room 27 works. It edits your memory in real time. It records your pain, plays it back differently — erases anything that might lead you back to the source."
"But why me?" she asked, voice breaking.
"What did I do?"
"You didn't do anything," Jaewon whispered.
"You were just the first one who could hear it clearly."
---
Silence stretched.
Then, Eura said the one thing she hadn't wanted to ask:
"What happened to Sejin Moon?"
Jaewon closed his eyes.
"She tried to rewrite the melody. She thought if she changed its structure — inverted the scales — it might destroy the source."
"Did it work?"
"No."
He opened his eyes.
"It absorbed her. And the rewritten melody became movement two."
Eura's mouth went dry.
"How many movements are there?"
He didn't answer.
Didn't have to.
Because suddenly, the reel turned by itself.
The box began humming.
Not out loud — inside her.
Eura clutched her ears.
It wasn't pain.
It was recognition.
She was starting to remember a room that didn't exist.
A melody she never wrote.
A voice — her own — saying things she never meant to say.
---
> "Do you want to be remembered or saved?"
"If you can only have one…"
"…choose silence."
---
Jaewon grabbed the box and slammed the power off.
Eura collapsed onto the floor, gasping.
He held her shoulders.
"You need to leave this alone—"
"No," she said, voice shaking.
"I need to finish it."
"You'll disappear."
"Then let me disappear on my own terms."
---
Later that night, Eura went back to Room Zero.
Alone.
Not to hide.
Not to cry.
To listen.
She brought nothing but her old notebook.
The one she hadn't used in over a year.
Page after page of musical fragments.
Chords that never made sense.
Measures that didn't connect.
Now, they were starting to.
She placed her hand on the floor.
Closed her eyes.
And began humming.
It was the first time in months she let herself make sound.
Real sound.
Her voice didn't shake.
Didn't crack.
The melody flowed out of her like it had been waiting.
Waiting for the room to be quiet enough to hear it again.
Then, beneath her hand, the floor
vibrated.
And a small circle of tiles clicked open.
Revealing a staircase.
Descending into something even Room Zero had buried.
Eura lit her phone flashlight.
And stepped down.
The staircase spiraled down like it had been carved out of breath.
Each step was narrow, unfinished. Dust stirred under her feet like memory unburied.
Eura kept her light forward.
No cobwebs. No rats.
Only the scent of static.
Like old speakers.
Like metal that had once vibrated with secrets.
The deeper she went, the heavier the air became.
Until she stepped onto the final landing.
And found the recording chamber.
---
It wasn't large.
Just a circular room with a single chair in the center.
A vintage microphone hung above it like a dead clock's pendulum.
The walls weren't walls.
They were mirrors.
Every angle reflected her back at herself.
But distorted.
In one, her face was older.
In another, she was crying.
In a third, she looked just like Sejin Moon.
And in the mirror behind the chair—
She wasn't in it at all.
Just the room. Empty.
Like she was already erased.
---
She stepped closer to the chair.
A name was etched into the armrest.
Not her brother's.
Not Sejin's.
It was hers.
Eura Han.
Dated exactly two years ago.
The day she turned 15.
The day she auditioned.
The day her life turned quiet.
She reached out and touched the seat.
It was warm.
Then — behind her — the microphone powered on.
And a voice spoke through the mirrored walls.
> "Sit down, Eura."
She froze.
The voice wasn't Jaewon's.
Or her brother's.
It was hers.
But deeper.
Not like an older version of herself.
But like a ghost echo — a version of her that kept growing while she stayed still.
---
> "I've been waiting for you to remember."
Eura slowly sat down.
The mirrors shimmered.
Each one now showed only her present self.
Terrified.
> "You gave me life when you wrote the melody," the voice said.
"I was silence until you made me beautiful."
She spoke aloud, her voice thin.
"You're the song?"
> "I'm what came from it.
The version of you that bloomed in pain, then was buried alive.
The piece everyone clapped for, but no one understood."
> "You didn't compose 'Soundless,' Eura."
"You became it."
---
Eura looked up at the microphone.
"I don't understand. Why would I forget myself?"
> "Because you made a choice."
"They offered you a contract — to represent the school. They wanted you to create melodies for memory erasure experiments."
> "You said no."
> "So they erased the version of you who said no."
The mirrors pulsed.
Scenes flickered inside them now — like projections on water.
In one, she saw herself crying in front of the music board.
In another, being led into Room 27 by two adults in white coats.
In another, she was singing.
And bleeding from the nose.
---
Eura stood.
Anger blooming beneath her skin.
"They used me."
> "They used us. But they also feared us.
Because we could create something louder than silence."
> "Something the world couldn't forget — even if it tried."
She turned in a full circle.
"Then help me finish the melody. All of it. Let me release it."
> "You're not ready."
"Then make me ready."
The walls cracked.
All of them.
The mirrors shattered outward — not like glass, but like sound exploding in every direction.
And beyond them — hundreds of hanging reels.
Suspended in mid-air, like a sound library forgotten by time.
One glowed gold.
Eura reached for it.
Her name was carved on the edge.
"Final Movement."
---
Jaewon was waiting at the top of the stairs when she came out.
She was shaking.
"Eura, I felt it," he said. "The whole school did. Every speaker pulsed. Every wall vibrated."
"I found the core," she said, breathless.
"And she found me."
He looked confused.
"She?"
"The me they buried. The part of me that refused to be silent. I talked to her."
She held up the gold reel.
"She wants me to finish what I started."
"You're going to perform it?"
"I'm going
to unleash it."
Jaewon stepped back.
"If you do that, the effect might not be reversible. It's not just memory anymore — this thing is bigger than forgetting."
"I know," she whispered.
"That's the point."
The school auditorium hadn't been used in over a year.
Too many rumors. Too many accidents.
After Sejin Moon's final piece was performed here and someone in the audience stopped breathing —
they sealed the place shut.
But tonight, it opened.
For her.
For the reel.
---
Eura stood at center stage with the old tape recorder on the stool beside her.
She didn't need a microphone.
The reel would speak louder than anything she could say.
Jaewon watched from the wings, arms crossed, fingers twitching.
"This is insane," he muttered.
"Eura, there's no audience—"
"There's always an audience," she said.
"Even silence listens."
---
She pressed PLAY.
The reel clicked.
Spun once.
Then again.
No sound.
Just static.
Until—
A single note.
Low.
Drawn out like it was pulling something from inside the earth.
Then a second note — sharper. Disoriented.
And then the melody began.
Not the one they knew.
Not the one her brother streamed.
This one was unfinished.
This one was alive.
---
Every lightbulb in the room dimmed.
Not off.
Down.
Like the melody had told the light: not now.
And Eura closed her eyes.
Because the sound was no longer coming from the reel.
It was coming from her.
---
> "You are the final movement."
"You are the silence between everything they forgot."
---
Memories slammed into her all at once:
Her brother, crying after playing her song, saying, "I felt like I was being erased."
Her own voice, whispering into a recorder at 15: "If I disappear, maybe they'll finally hear me."
The white coats.
The contract.
The mirror that didn't reflect her.
And through it all:
That voice —
hers —
but not hers —
singing a lullaby for the version of herself no one remembered.
---
The reel cracked.
Eura's eyes snapped open.
The melody had grown too large for tape.
It needed a vessel.
Her body.
Her voice.
Her pain.
She stepped forward and sang.
Just a hum at first.
Then words.
Not lyrics.
Memories.
> "Do you remember the room where they locked the light?"
"Do you remember the voice that said you were too loud to exist?"
"Do you remember your name?"
---
The stage vibrated.
The floorboards warped — not breaking — bending upward as though listening.
The sound left the auditorium and swept through the school halls.
---
Down in the dorms, students looked up from phones, startled.
Some blinked as childhood memories they'd lost came flooding back.
Some wept.
Some stared blankly, hearing voices they'd forgotten.
One girl started drawing again — something she hadn't done in three years.
Another found himself whispering the name of someone he thought he'd imagined.
In the basement where Room 27 was hidden—
The lights exploded.
---
Eura didn't stop singing.
Because she understood it now:
The melody didn't erase memories.
It returned them.
The school hadn't been using her to make people forget.
They had been trying to protect themselves from remembering.
Because memory is dangerous.
It makes silence impossible.
---
She felt her voice splitting.
Too much light in her chest.
Too much sound in her spine.
The mirrors behind her cracked open — the ones she hadn't seen before — and showed dozens of faces.
Versions of her.
Versions of everyone who had been inside Room 27.
All of them… watching her sing.
---
Then — one final note.
Pure.
The kind of note you don't hear.
You feel.
The kind that doesn't stop when the sound ends.
The kind that leaves silence changed forever.
---
The reel stopped.
She dropped to her knees.
Exhausted.
But not broken.
Not empty.
Not erased.
Jaewon rushed onto the stage.
Caught her before she collapsed completely.
"Eura… can you hear me?"
She smiled weakly.
"Louder than ever."
---
That night, news spread.
No one knew what to call it.
Some called it a "mass memory event."
Some said it was a hacking attack.
Others said a ghost had haunted the speaker system.
But the melody played across the entire school campus.
And for the first time in years—
Students began remembering what they'd chosen to forget.
And what had been taken from them.
---
Back in Room Zero, the shattered staircase sealed itself shut.
But the door no longer locked.
And the melody—
Lingered.
Like something that had always been there.
Waiting for someone brave enough to listen.
---