Let me tell you something about Yeongdo, over in Busan.
Yeongdo — some of you might know it. If you follow the coastline down toward the water, there's a stretch where old steel frames have just been left to rot. They say ships were built there once, but decades ago a massive fire broke out, and after that, everyone cleared out. Now it's nothing but rusted scaffolding and char marks — an abandoned shipyard. And for a long time, the people around that area have been passing around strange stories. Nothing confirmed. Just the kind of thing that floats around.
I'm not sure exactly when this was, but there was a university student named Jiho. He'd had a few drinks with friends, and without much thought, they wandered into the shipyard. Around eleven at night, apparently.
The smell hit him first when they went in. Rust and iron, and something burnt. Like the memory of a fire that happened decades ago still hadn't left — clinging right to the inside of your nose. His friends were laughing, flashlights swinging, pushing further in. But Jiho's feet, for some reason, took him somewhere else. Not a decision. More like being pulled.
The sound of his friends' laughter faded behind him as he drifted deeper inside. When he looked down at the floor, something felt wrong. Concrete underfoot, but the sensation was soft — like there was something just beneath the surface. He looked down and saw nothing. The feeling didn't go away.
Further in, he noticed something on the far wall. No light source anywhere, and yet there was a shadow on the wall. A shadow shaped like a person, lurching forward one slow step at a time. But there was nothing casting it. No light, no source. When Jiho swung his flashlight toward it, the shadow stopped. Then it was gone.
He turned around to leave.
That was when it happened.
He felt breath on the back of his neck. Cold and damp. It had the quality of a person's breath, but without any warmth at all. And then, right beside his ear, a low voice.
"Why did you come here."
No question in it, he said. Not asking. Just... confirming. Like it already knew, and only wanted to hear him say it.
When Jiho turned around, there was no one. Nothing inside the reach of his flashlight. No footsteps. Only the smell, still there. That burnt smell.
He ran back in a panic, but when he reached the spot where his friends had been, they were gone. He assumed they'd headed out already — and they had, they were waiting outside. That was all. Nothing more to it.
Back home, he was scrolling through his phone when he opened his gallery. There were four photos he had no memory of taking. They were from inside the shipyard — his friends, laughing. But something was off about them. His friends' faces, yes, but the angles were wrong. Shot straight on, and yet their eyes were fixed on something elsewhere. Mouths smiling, but the space beneath their eyes was too long. The proportions didn't add up.
Whether Jiho deleted those photos or not, I don't know.
It's just something I heard.
But one thing kept nagging at me after I heard it. Why those words — "why did you come here." Not angry. Not trying to frighten anyone. It sounded genuinely curious. Like something that hadn't seen a visitor in decades, and suddenly there was one. Whether it was glad, or something else entirely — you couldn't tell.
That's the part that scares me most, honestly.
