Hidden Hearts

Prologue ~ What Was This?

?

?/?/??

~ 

I'm not Korean, but I was there abroad whenever I found a weird phone in the middle of the street. 

I'd just sat down on a bench to wait for my bus when I first saw it. 

Lying there...weirdly. 

Weird - is the only word I can think of...when I remember it. 

I don't know why the - heck I picked that phone up - I must have completely forgotten that it was smeared with mud and wet grime from last night's heavy rain and absolutely...yuck. 

Through the dirt I saw that its case was pink, with a cute flowery design.

But when I turned it over, I almost gasped aloud. 

The screen was almost entirely destroyed. Its cracks were so deep that it couldn't ever have been done by an accidental drop, or even the hard crunch of a stomp... 

But then it began to glitch, it started horribly - flashing - it...

It - lit up. 

What...?

How could it still be...working?! 

It looked so technologically - dead - how could it still even have...charge? 

But it was on, still with at least some light and life left. 

And the screen glowed with a wallpaper which made me for a second forget its phone's disgusting state. 

It was a cute selfie of a man and woman, a young couple in the snow. Their faces were flushed with the cold, their noses, ears and lips were pink, and they both had crossed pins in their hair. I supposed that the woman was the owner of this phone, or... well, it could been her boyfriend's, I guess...? 

She seemed to be taking the photo, nonetheless. 

They both were wrapped in winter coats and she was wrapped even more in his arms. She seemed to be laughing as she beamed, and there was brightness in her cloudy eyes as she was warmed by his kiss to her cheek. 

They looked like such a sweet couple...

The moment was captured forever, here. 

But...this was the first ever lock screen I had seen without...a lock. 

It opened with a single touch. 

The stark screen immediately launched an app swamped with huge text and pages stuffed with few personal contacts puzzled amidst hundreds of email addresses.

It would not close. 

The app kept opening, opening and opening as the same name spammed and flashed madly, frantically, a name in a language I could not read. 

Error after error raged until it crashed, and the homepage flooded forth. 

There was no space.

Everything was huge. The font, every button, every icon - it was as though it all was trying to burst through the screen, like it was all desperate, like it was all swelling to explode. 

My fingers slipped over who knows how many icons as I tried to tap something - anything - 

And terror threw the phone from my hands and far out onto the road, because it had begun to speak. 

Like a cursed radio, the device spurted a crackling pitch of words and sentences unknown and delusional to me - 

The blare of traffic could not mask it, not whilst my eyes remained fixed upon that phone, whose audio chopped and choked over itself, overwhelming as a haunting dream, this - demented software -

Silenced. 

Crushed by a roaring car to bitter, helpless pieces. 

But a horrible feeling still twisted in me. 

I felt sick. 

There was something not right about that phone. There was something so odd about it... 

Oh my gosh, I shouldn't have touched a stranger's phone...

It wasn't for me to see...nor anyone but...itself. 

Every phone had secrets. 

Every phone had a story. 

Yet I could feel it, somehow, to my soul, that this one...told something profound. 

Something huge. 

Something - weird...

Something...scary. 

Even whenever the street had cleared of every car, the disturbing voice still played.  

The shattered screen still flashed. 

Just...how?! 

I had to see it one last time. 

And so when the road was wholly safe and empty, I crept towards it. 

This was just like a horror movie. 

The closer I came, the broken parrot of that - cursed software did not fade or die but only grew more intense. 

The robotic voice began to sound almost real. 

It began to sound as if somebody was pretending to be a machine. 

A man, making a ridiculous noises. 

Like the whoosh of the car which had just destroyed the phone itself, I heard a 'Nnrrrrrr-ow!' 

What...

The...

 '...wowowow...! Mmmmeow ~!' 

The phone crashed. 

Dead now...it - had to be. 

No, I didn't care -

I didn't care if the screen still flashed and bullied. I had to go. 

And so I left, but shaken in a way I had never been before. 

I missed my bus and went back to my hotel, but I didn't sleep a wink. 

I couldn't shake it from my mind. 

I had pushed that weird voice out of my head fast. Now it was the name which haunted me, the name which had been giant and frozen on the screen when that messenger app forced itself open. It seemed to rule that phone. 

~ 

♡은주♡ 

~ 

A/N: ~ I know that the Mystic Messenger fandom isn't really alive anymore...

I'm very, very late to the game but I absolutely love it! I knew I had to make a story, so I...hope somebody might...eventually come across this! 😅 

~ Important Note and Warning! ~ 

Just as the game itself, in this story there will be implied physical domestic abuse, violence, and serious mental and emotional manipulation under the premise of religion. 

Please know this, and please don't read this story if these topics make you particularly uncomfortable! I will put trigger warnings at the beginning of any chapter which contains any of this content. That is my promise. <3