Temporary Hiatus

Once upon a time, in a kingdom built entirely of neon lights and glass screens, there lived seven princes who were so utterly exhausted they had forgotten how to breathe.

The fairy tale version always sounded much more poetic than the reality. The reality was seven deeply burnt-out guys crammed into the back of an extended luxury transport van, speeding down the Olympic Expressway in the pouring rain.

I leaned my heavy head against the cool, tinted window, watching the blurred lights of Seoul streak by. The dashboard clock in the front read 23:58. The rhythmic thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers was the only sound in the vehicle, a steady metronome to my mounting anxiety.

I tapped my thumb against my index finger. One, two, three, four. A compulsion I could never quite shake when the world felt entirely out of my control, which, lately, was every single waking second.

Next to me, our youngest, Tae ho, was passed out. His head lolled onto my shoulder, his breathing painfully shallow. Even in sleep, his brow was furrowed, carrying a profound, silent agony that I didn’t know how to fix. Across the aisle, Donnie was slumped over. On camera, he was our charming center, but in the dim light of the van, the faint, sour smell of hidden liquor clung to him—a desperate numbing agent for a life lived under a microscope. Su yeol leaned against the far window, his eyes closed, the friendly energy he used to keep our spirits up entirely drained. Beside him, Han and Eun ho were tangled in a mess of limbs. Han, our cheerful mood-maker, was dead to the world, while Eun ho twitched restlessly, clammy and shivering with secrets he thought I didn’t see. In the very back, Fin sat in total silence, staring out at the wet asphalt as if waiting for the ghost of a terrible mistake to appear in the headlights.

We had just sold out a massive stadium. Millions of people loved us. And yet, for months, a heavy, suffocating weight had been sitting on my chest, a profound grayness that made simply existing feel like trying to walk through wet cement. I was Ju won; the leader. The pillar holding the roof up. I couldn’t let it fall.

The digital clock clicked to 23:59.

Just let me sleep, I thought, closing my eyes, tapping my fingers against my thigh. One, two, three, four. Just let it all stop.

The clock clicked to 00:00.

I didn’t hear the tires lose their grip on the slick asphalt, but I felt the violent, stomach-dropping lurch of the van hydroplaning. There was a sudden shout from our manager, the blinding flash of oncoming headlights cutting through the rain, and the terrifying, deafening shriek of twisting metal.

Then, an absolute, heavy nothingness.

I had braced myself for the agony of the impact, but instead, I felt a bizarre sensation of weightlessness—like a helium balloon slipping from a child’s grasp, drifting upward into the cold.

I opened my eyes.

The rain had stopped, frozen entirely mid-air like suspended glass beads. The deafening crunch of the accident was gone, replaced by a suffocating silence. The world around me had been drained of all color, reduced to an eerie, washed-out overlay of grays and muted blues.

I looked down. My hands were semi-translucent, glowing with a faint, frantic silver light. I spun around, my breath catching in my throat. There was the wrecked, twisted shell of our black van, smashed against the concrete barrier. Inside the crushed metal, I could see my own physical body, slumped and bleeding against the window.

Panic flared, sharp and immediate. My mind desperately sought order. I began to count.

One. Tae ho materialized a few feet away, trembling, his edges flickering like a bad television signal.

Two, three. Fin and Donnie appeared next, staring at their ghostly hands in muted horror.

Four, five, six, seven. Su yeol, Han, and Eun ho gathered around us, all wearing the same terrified, glowing translucence. Seven shivering ghosts stranded on a desolate, monochrome highway.

“Are we dead?” Su yeol whispered, his voice echoing strangely, stretched out as if he were speaking underwater.

Before I could force out a lie to comfort him, the deep shadows beneath the concrete overpass began to writhe. The darkness itself seemed to rot, peeling away from the pillars. Grotesque, spindly figures with elongated, broken limbs and burning red eyes dragged themselves out of the concrete. They smelled like rotting meat and ozone.

They locked their eyes on us, their jaws unhinging in silent, starving shrieks.

Suddenly, a ring of harsh, blinding white light flared up around us. Men and women in dark tactical gear materialized out of thin air, wielding blades and heavy crossbows that hummed with a searing, pure energy. They formed a tight barricade around our shivering group, firing bolts of pure light into the approaching monsters.

But there were too many. The creatures threw their bodies against the light, their sheer, desperate numbers cracking the holy barrier.

“Get behind me!” I yelled, shoving Tae ho and Fin back. My protective instincts flared over the paralyzing terror. I had no weapons, no power, but I couldn’t let them be touched.

Then, the world stopped entirely.

The air pressure dropped so violently it felt like the sky itself was caving in. The frantic shouts of the soldiers and the hissing of the monsters were instantly snuffed out.

Click. Click. Click.

A woman stepped through the gray mist. She wore a long trench coat, her hands casually shoved into her pockets. She had the soft, unblemished face of a sixteen-year-old girl, her dark hair curling slightly in the damp, freezing air.

She didn’t carry glowing weapons. She didn’t shout a battle cry. But the moment she appeared, the monstrous creatures froze in sheer, unadulterated terror.

She didn’t look at us. She didn’t offer a word of comfort. She simply looked at the swarming monsters and smiled—the terrifying, hungry smile of an apex predator staring at a buffet.

She moved faster than the human eye could process. Her hand shot out, grabbing one of the spindly, terrifying creatures by its throat. Instead of banishing it, her jaw unhinged. It stretched far wider than human anatomy should ever allow, revealing rows of jagged, obsidian teeth.

She bit down.

The sickening sound of crunching bone and tearing shadow echoed loudly across the silent highway. The tactical soldiers lowered their weapons, their faces draining of blood as they scrambled backward in absolute dread. We watched, paralyzed by an entirely new, unfathomable horror, as she systematically tore through the remaining monsters. She devoured them, tearing chunks of dark, writhing energy from their bodies and swallowing them whole, moving with a brutal, starving efficiency.

When she consumed the last of the shadows, she licked a streak of dark, viscous ichor from her lip with a sickeningly casual swipe of her tongue. Her jaw snapped back into place.

Slowly, she turned her ancient, pitch-black eyes toward us. The overwhelming, suffocating weight of her presence pressed down on the expressway, heavier than the depression that had brought us here. The gray world tilted violently, the heavy weight of the night crashed down on me, and before I could even draw a breath, everything faded to black.