What I have to tell you today is... a story about an apartment somewhere in Gangnam.
I'd rather not say exactly where. Just — from what I heard, it's one of those mixed-use luxury complexes with a name people recognize, even by Gangnam standards. Marble floors in the lobby, a security booth, the parking garage full of foreign cars. I can't say for certain, but apparently it was the kind of place celebrities and businessmen used to come and go from, back in the day.
Among the security staff there, though, a certain story has quietly been passed down.
The fourth floor — or any floor ending in four, that whole line of units — you don't go there unless you have business. Especially on the night patrol, you move through that corridor quickly and don't linger. They don't tell you why, not at first. It gets passed along sideways, in a low voice.
This is something I heard.
A few years back, a new security guard came to work at that complex. Mid-fifties, from what I understand. He was on the night shift, doing solo rounds, and one night around two in the morning he was making his way through that floor's corridor.
Nothing seemed wrong. A fluorescent light flickering at one end of the hall, the sharp smell of floor wax rising up from the linoleum. But somewhere around the middle of the corridor, the smell changed. Not wax anymore — something sweetish. Faintly damp, almost. Later, when he described it to a colleague, he put it in a single sentence.
"It smelled like a hospital. But with flowers mixed in."
You know what that smell is. You've been to a wake. You know.
At that moment, his feet stopped. Without him deciding to. Because there was someone standing in front of that unit's door.
Standing with their back to him. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman — just a small, dark shape. Two in the morning, in the corridor, simply standing there.
The instant he stepped forward and said, "Excuse me," the figure turned its head.
It isn't that the face was missing. There was a face. But he said that was what made it worse. A perfectly ordinary face — with its eyes closed. Standing there in the hallway, eyes closed.
And then it murmured something. He could hear the voice, but couldn't make out a single word. He said it felt less like hearing and more like a low, slow sound pressing itself against the side of his ear.
After that night, he never worked at that complex again. I heard he handed in his resignation.
Later, people found out that the unit had cycled through residents several times in a remarkably short span. One tenant collapsed suddenly just months after moving in. The one after that watched their business fall completely to ruin. There was even talk of a shaman being brought in — who then left partway through without a word of explanation.
Whether anyone is living in that unit now, I honestly don't know. I can't say for certain.
Only — if you happen to be walking down that corridor and you catch a faint sweetish smell for no reason, they say it's best to quicken your step.
Because something may be standing there with its eyes closed, waiting.
