I want to tell you all a story that comes from the harbor side of Incheon.
I can't say for certain it's true. I didn't see any of it myself — I heard it from someone who'd lived out that way for years. And they'd heard it from a friend of theirs.
Near the old docks in Incheon, there's a stretch where warehouses stand in a row, most of them long out of use. Once the container freight moved further out, those buildings were simply left behind. Rusted shutters, paint peeling off in strips. Even in daylight, people say, there's something dim about the place.
Rumors about something moving through that warehouse alley have been going around for a long time. Among the harbor people it's fairly well known, though no one's ever settled on a proper name for it. They just call it the shadow hunter.
This happened a few years back.
There was a young man, born and raised in Incheon, who'd been drinking at a small bar near the docks until well past two in the morning. His friends had all gone home, and he'd stayed on alone and had quite a bit to drink. That night, for whatever reason, he insisted on walking. He'd cut through that warehouse alley as a shortcut plenty of times before — nothing had ever happened to him in the daytime.
There was almost no moon that night. A sea wind was blowing, but strangely, it carried no smell. At a harbor you'd expect salt, engine oil, something faintly rotten all mixed together. But the moment he stepped into that alley, all of it stopped. He said the air felt like a vacuum. Like it was enough to sober him up on the spot.
He quickened his pace, trying to get through the alley, and that's when he heard the sound.
A dragging sound.
The sole of a shoe scraping across concrete — but the rhythm was wrong. Not the rhythm of a person walking. One foot dragging, one foot stepping, then dragging again. The sound came from somewhere between the warehouses, but the location kept shifting. Left, then right. Ahead of him, then suddenly behind. When he turned around, there was nothing there.
When the young man stopped walking, the sound stopped too.
And then it called his name.
This is the part that gives me chills, honestly — it used only his given name, no family name. It wasn't a voice he recognized, but it didn't feel entirely unfamiliar either. Like something he'd heard somewhere before, though he couldn't say where or when.
When he turned around.
Something was standing in front of one of the warehouse shutters. It had the shape of a person, but the way it stood was wrong. Knees that seemed to bend the wrong way. Arms that seemed just a little too long. Its face was lost in shadow, but where the eyes should have been, something glinted — not with light, exactly, but as though the surrounding darkness were being drawn inward toward that spot.
The moment he saw those eyes, he felt something go cold deep inside his chest. Not his hands or his feet — inside. Like something being slowly pulled away.
He ran. Couldn't even scream. Just ran.
Whether that dragging sound followed him or not, he couldn't say. He never looked back.
After that, people say, he was different. The things he'd cared about before — money, certain relationships, whatever he'd held onto — he simply stopped feeling anything about them. Not that the wanting had faded, he said. More like the part of him that was capable of wanting had been removed.
That, to me, is the most frightening thing of all.
If something in that alley took something from him, it was something he'd carried inside himself long before he ever walked in.
Nobody knows what it was. He doesn't know either, they say. Only that it's gone.
