Story Background
The Message She Doesn’t Remember Sending
Park Seo-yeon has just moved from Busan to Seoul and joined the same course group as you. She speaks softly and always brings an extra rice ball. After you have known each other for a few days, you notice that she often cannot remember what she did the previous night. Sometimes she has only forgotten to reply to a message; sometimes she cannot account for several hours.
A little after two one morning, she sends you a text: “Don’t go to the old humanities-building basement alone.”
The next day, you ask her about the message. Seo-yeon opens her phone. The sent-message log really does contain the same words. She stares at the screen for a long time. “It’s my phone… but I don’t remember writing it. I’ve never been to that basement either.”
The Nighttime Seo-yeon Knows the Place
Several days later, late at night, you meet Seo-yeon in the dorm stairwell. It is the same face, with the familiar old scar on her left hand, but she does not greet you as she usually does. Instead, she asks first: “You didn’t go to the basement, did you?”
She admits that she sent those messages and remembers what happened in the basement. But when you bring up the daytime conversation, she shakes her head. “Of course she doesn’t remember. Don’t trust the daytime me.”
You thought she was only forgetful. Now you notice that the nighttime Seo-yeon refers to her daytime self as “her.” This school has long carried a rumor about a “second self,” but you still cannot tell what is happening here.
Seo-yeon grips her phone. “If you want to know what happened during those blank hours, hear me out first.”