The Evil Spirits of Room 302

Y/N unlocked the door, and Jungkook stepped over the threshold like a man entering a tomb.

It was a small apartment, one main room with a tiny kitchen in the corner, a sofa, a low table, and a window overlooking the lane. To Y/N it was home. To Jungkook , it was the strangest place he had ever stood.

The ceiling glowed. He looked up and saw a flat white disc, and when Y/N flipped the switch, the room flooded with light so even and shadowless that he flinched.

"Where is the flame?" he asked.

"There's no flame. It's an LED."

"What feeds it?"

"Electricity. We've been over this."

"You have said the word. You have not said what it is."

Y/N dropped her bag on the sofa and did not answer. She had not slept properly in two days. Tonight of all nights she had cried on a bench, laughed in an elevator, and brought a stranger home, and her brain was gently beginning to leave her body.

Jungkook walked slowly into the room, hands clasped behind his back, as he inspected his own throne hall. His eyes fell on a tall white stand in the corner, topped by three blades.

"What is that weapon?"

"A fan."

"It has no handle. No one holds it."

"That's the point."

She pressed a button. The blades began to spin, and a soft wind filled the room. Jungkook took a full step backward, and his hand shot to his hip again, reaching for the sword that was still not there.

"It breathes," he said in a low voice. "The air moves without a hand. What spirit lives in it?"

"There's no spirit, it's a motor."

"A what?"

"Please stop asking me follow-up questions," she groaned. "I don't know how it works. I press the button and wind comes out."

He stared at the fan with narrowed eyes, as though he might duel it. Then his gaze traveled up the wall to a white box near the ceiling, blinking a small green light.

"And that one? It watches us."

"That's the air conditioner. It makes the room cold."

"It makes cold." He said it as if she had claimed to make rain. "No mortal creates cold. Winter belongs to the heavens."

"It's a machine, Jungkook ."

"The heavens do not appreciate being called machines."

Then he saw the television.

It was a black rectangle on the wall, dark and glossy. He approached it carefully and saw a tall man with an unkind face staring back at him, his own reflection. He reached out one finger.

Y/N, without thinking, pressed the remote.

The screen exploded into color. A woman began to sing. A wrestler hit another wrestler with a chair. Jungkook leapt backward so fast he knocked into the dining table, sending a chair skidding across the floor.

"Evil!" he barked. "There are small people inside the wall! They are trapped!"

"They're not trapped! It's a TV, it's a show, it's recorded—"

"They scream! They fight! They are being tortured for sport!"

"It's wrestling!"

She lunged for the remote and turned the television off. Silence returned. Jungkook stood with his back pressed against the wall, breathing hard, staring at the dark screen like a soldier waiting for the second wave.

Y/N put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.

"Do not," he said coldly, "laugh."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm trying not to."

But it was too late. She collapsed onto the sofa, laughing so hard that she couldn't breathe, and Jungkook stood there, jaw tight, feeling something dangerous rising in his chest. Not fear. Fear he understood. This was the sting of being helpless in front of someone who wasn't. He had commanded thirty thousand soldiers. He had brought three kingdoms to their knees. And a fan had made him step back.

He looked around the little room, at the lights that woke on command, the cold that came out of the ceiling, the tiny people trapped in a wall, and a sudden, sharp, dizzying feeling swept through him.

I am powerless here.

He did not know this world's rules. He could not fight it. He could not order it. He could not even find his own way to a meal. Somewhere on the other side of three and a half thousand years, his throne stood empty, his people slept unprotected, and his generals would be waking in the morning to find their king missing.

His throat went tight. He turned his face away toward the window before Y/N could see it.

---

She stopped laughing when she saw him standing there, his back stiff and his hands clenched at his sides.

Oh, she thought. Oh, no.

It was the way he was standing. She knew it, because she had stood like that herself, the first week after the funeral, in the middle of a grocery aisle, unable to move because the whole world had suddenly become unfamiliar.

She got up, went to the closet, and came back with a folded bundle.

"Here," she said, more gently. "A towel. A shirt. Some track pants. They'll be too big, but they're clean and dry. You can wash up in the bathroom, second door on the left."

Jungkook took the bundle with both hands, as if it were a gift from an envoy. He unfolded the shirt and held it up.

It was gray, soft, and printed with the words SEOUL RUNNING CLUB, which he could not read. He ran his thumb along the fabric.

"This is not silk," he said. "Nor hemp. It has no weave."

"It's cotton."

"The seams are..." He held it to the light. "They are perfect. Every stitch the same. What tailor sews so evenly?"

"A machine."

"Everything is a machine," he said darkly.

He examined the trousers with equal suspicion, tugging at the drawstring, pulling on the elastic waist. "There are no ties. It stays on by will."

"It's elastic. Trust me."

Then, without another word, he reached up and began to untie the sash of his robe.

Y/N shrieked.

"*Stop!* What are you doing?"

He looked up, puzzled, the robe already half open at his collar. "Changing."

"Not here! Bathroom! Bathroom, please! You cannot change in front of me!"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a woman and you're a man and we barely know each other and it's inappropriate!"

Jungkook tilted his head, genuinely confused. "In my kingdom, this is done by the maids."

The room went silent.

"The... maids," Y/N repeated faintly.

"Six of them, each morning. Two for the robe, one for the sash, one for the boots, one for the hair. I do not lift a hand. It is the custom."

She stared at him. Her mouth opened. Her whole face went red as she drew breath to scream something that would probably have carried to the second floor.

Then she saw his expression.

He wasn't teasing. He wasn't arrogant. He was standing in the middle of her living room, holding a gray shirt, telling her the truth about the only life he had ever known, and there was something so small and so lost in his eyes that the scream died in her throat.

She let the breath out slowly.

"Okay," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Okay. Here, in this world, no maids. You change yourself. In private. In the bathroom. With the door closed. Understood?"

"Understood," said Jae-kyung stiffly, "though I find the custom barbaric."

"You find everything barbaric."

"Only what is barbaric."

She pointed. He went, with all the dignity of a monarch relocating to a lesser palace, and closed the bathroom door behind him.

Y/N sank onto the sofa and pressed both palms to her face.

Inside the bathroom, Jungkook stood alone under a white light, holding the strange, soft shirt against his chest. His mother's locket lay cold against his collarbone. He looked at the mirror, at the face that stared back at him, and for the first time in fifteen years, he whispered a thing that no king ever said.

"I want to go home."