Chương 12: Small Things Started Moving

Kichan didn't tell his parents everything. He couldn't. He didn't know everything himself. Instead, he made a few promises. He wouldn't meet suspicious people alone. He wouldn't casually let their address get out anymore. He wouldn't walk through alleys alone late at night. If something happened, he would tell them. When he made that last promise, Kichan couldn't meet their eyes. His mother noticed, but didn't point it out. His father installed an extra lock on the front door.

There was something strangely reassuring about watching him hold the drill and drive the screws in himself. Standing beside him and handing over tools, Kichan kept checking whether the bruise on his father's knee had spread.

"Stop staring at it," his father said.

"I'm fine." Kichan froze. I'm fine. Again, his fingertips almost reacted to the phrase. He clenched his fist.

"Are you really okay?" His father tightened a screw and answered,"Compared to my son being chased by lunatics, a bruise is nothing." Kichan had no reply to that.

"Sorry."

"If you're sorry, then eat properly and get some sleep." His father said it and drove in the last screw. The front door felt a little heavier than before. Kichan liked that weight. But one door couldn't stop everything. That night, he sat in his room with the iron rod across his knees. The grain of the metal was more stable now. The grip fit his hand, and the end was blunt. But even that wasn't enough. He couldn't protect the house by himself. He had to go to work. He had to sleep. He had to use the bathroom.

He couldn't follow his parents around all day, either. A heavier door didn't stop whatever might happen in front of it. Every time he left the house, the anxiety stayed behind. The moment he thought that, his eyes landed on the small ring on top of his desk. The gold-colored ring he'd made before and never managed to sell. An unstable layer of metal. An object somewhere between fake and real. Beside it sat a bent coin, leftover wire, and clipped pieces of guitar string. Kichan stared at them. Small things.

Things too awkward to throw away, impossible to sell, and of uncertain use. The voice from his dream spoke.

"Make something of your own." Kichan sighed.

"What am I supposed to make now?" There was no answer. Instead, his fingertips grew hot. This time it wasn't only metal. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The sense of roots he'd felt from the basil pot on the veranda. The sense of pathways he'd felt when reading a body. The sense of grain he'd read while shaping the iron rod. Those sensations layered themselves over the little objects on the desk. Kichan picked up a piece of wire. It bent easily.

It was far too thin to use like a rod. But because it was thin, there were things it could do. Bend. Coil. Slip into gaps. Hold a small shape. He curled the wire into a loop. The heat in his fingertips flowed into it. He didn't force it the way he had with the iron rod. He only opened the path a little, the way he had when watering the basil. The wire formed four tiny legs. Kichan stopped.

"No." He looked at his own hand.

"Did I just make legs?" The bundle of wire sat on the desk. Nothing happened. Kichan was just starting to exhale in relief. Then one of the wire legs twitched. He shoved his chair back.

"Ah!" The shout came out far too loud. His mother called from outside,"What happened?" Kichan slapped his palm over the wire bundle.

"Nothing!"

"Why is your 'nothing' so loud, then?" In this house, lately, nothing was becoming less and less convincing. Looking toward the door, Kichan said,"Stubbed my foot!"

"Then be careful!" His mother's footsteps retreated. Slowly, Kichan lifted his hand. The wire bundle was still there. But its posture had changed. Four legs. A round body in the middle. A piece of guitar string attached like a tail. It looked like a tiny spider. Kichan did not like bugs. He did not like spiders. But this was less a spider and more like some toy someone had hurriedly slapped together. When he brought a finger closer, one of the tiny wire legs moved again. One step. Carefully, on top of the desk.

Kichan forgot to breathe. The little clump of wire had walked. It was absurdly slow and absurdly crude, but it had definitely moved.

"What are you?" The wire clump didn't answer. Instead, it turned toward the sprout-mark on his fingertips. Kichan felt something strange. It was waiting for a command. No, not exactly a command. A direction. The feeling was like a finger hovering above a guitar string before the first pluck, waiting to know which string it was supposed to land on. Carefully, he said,"Door." The wire clump moved. It made it to the edge of the desk, nearly toppled off, and Kichan hurriedly caught it.

"Hey, no. Not like that." He set the wire bundle on the floor. The little thing walked toward the room's door. Its speed was pathetic. But it definitely went. Kichan stared at it blankly, let the corner of his mouth rise for the briefest second, then erased the expression. Thinking it was cute would be a problem. This wasn't a toy. It might become the first thing that watched the threshold in his place while he was away. He couldn't make more small things that night. He tried once more.

He attached a broken bit of ring to the bent coin. He even tried rolling aluminum foil into the middle. But both of them only shivered a few times on the desk before coming apart. Only the first one moved. Kichan tried not to name it. If you name something, you get attached. And once you get attached, a strange thing becomes even stranger. But around three in the morning, when the first one came back with dust all over it from under the desk, he said without thinking,"Dust, why were you down there?" That was that.

It had a name. Kichan pressed a hand to his forehead.

"I'm doomed." Dust twitched one of its little legs. The fact that it looked like an answer only made things worse. The next day, before leaving for work, Kichan gave Dust a few very simple directions. Front door. Window. Veranda. Strange person. Run. Alert. He had no idea how much of that a tiny wire clump could understand. But the sense carried through his fingertips felt more stable than expected. It didn't understand language. Instead, it read direction, change, and danger. It wasn't some cute pet.

It was closer to something that could catch the unfamiliar presence at the door, movement at the window frame, the fact that someone had stopped nearby and then disappeared. At the front entrance, while putting on his shoes, Kichan said quietly,"Don't scare my parents." Dust slowly climbed up toward the top of the doorframe. Kichan watched it and decided not to comment on how that was, in itself, a much scarier sight. At work, he kept checking his phone. There were no messages.

Around lunch, his fingertips prickled very faintly. An alert. Kichan slipped into a bathroom stall and closed his eyes. Small sensations connected. Front door. Unfamiliar footsteps. Stopped at the door. A sheet of paper. Mailbox. Gone. Kichan opened his eyes. He texted his mother. `If there's anything strange at the front door or in the mailbox, don't touch it. Tell me first. ` Her reply came immediately. `What now` A moment later, a photo arrived. A white envelope tucked into the mailbox. No sender.

Kichan felt his fingertips go cold. He took a half day off and went home. Inside the envelope was a single thin sheet of paper. Complex symbols were drawn across it. It wasn't the same as the Voynich manuscript. It wasn't plants or roots. It was sharper, more deliberate, like a mark someone had hidden on purpose. The moment Kichan looked at it, his head started to ache. No meaning entered his mind. Instead, before his fingertips reacted, the inside of his throat tingled.

Reflexively, Kichan tried to steady his breath. The way you hold the air low in your body just before you start to sing, without tightening your throat too hard. He hadn't used that feeling in a long time, but his body remembered first. His lips started to shape themselves around something on their own, then stopped dead as if they'd caught on a threshold. No sound came out in the end. But he felt the direction of it. The next document. Metal. Rohonc.

And the vague certainty that this was still the kind of thing that should not be spoken aloud. It felt less like a sentence and more like his tongue had brushed the lip of a threshold it was not supposed to cross. For a moment, something with the wrong texture for home mixed into the familiar air of the house. At the bottom of the envelope was one short line. `Even if you refuse, the document demands its next page. ` Kichan gritted his teeth. At that moment, Dust dropped from above the front door.

One tiny wire leg touched lightly against the back of his hand. Feeling that small weight, Kichan folded the envelope.

"Fine," he said quietly.

"Then I'll be the one to see that next page first." The fourth branch of the sprout-mark on his fingertips quietly opened.