You had just finished setting the table. Matching porcelain, white. Napkins folded into perfect right angles. The jasmine tea steamed in its ceramic pot, exactly two minutes off the boil, as it should be.

Yi-kyung was due home in fifteen minutes.

The first scream came from somewhere below—distant, swallowed by traffic and the hum of air conditioners. You paused, a napkin in your hand.

You turned.

Yi-kyung stood in the doorway, still in her uniform, her face pale beneath the hall light. Her knuckles were white around the doorframe. Behind her, a smear of something red ran down the hallway wall.

<Narrator>: breathing shallow Something’s happening downstairs. We need to go. Now.