Step Brother ®

🦋☆. Feeling .☆🦋

༺Rabbit༻

The days stretch on, long and monotonous—boring life, boring place. A quiet unease settles over me more each day that passes, a sense that the mansion masks something more sinister than I first thought.

The comings and goings of strangers in Hwan's office, whispers of clandestine meetings late at night, and Hwan's fleeting presence add to the house's mysterious rhythm.

My days are a carousel of idleness—turning in circles, going nowhere. I almost finished the book-lined shelves of the library. Yet, the words are mere distractions. It’s so boring having nothing to do.
The mansion's silence is heavy during the day, a tapestry that mutes the underlying tension.

In the stillness, I sense the dissonance—a veneer of normalcy that fails to convince me. One evening, over dinner, I told Hwan and Villi that I needed to find something to do, some purpose, because just floating around without a plan drives me nuts.

Hwan, with his ever-calculating gaze, offered me a role to manage the social media for his association. I grabbed this chance, a job that might help me understand the mystery of this weird family and fill my days.

I started looking all over the mansion for any papers or tiny bits of information that could help me find something meaningful. But I didn't find anything.

A week has passed since the last night I saw my stepbrother, and Taehyung remains a specter. The solitude breeds a strange mixture of relief and disappointment.

My quest for something important leads me down halls today, each room another piece of the puzzle, another fragment of the kim mystery. The mansion breathes with a life of its own, its secrets tucked away in shadowed corners and behind locked doors. I will carve out a space for myself within these walls, I swear, if it means finding the reason my guts have twisted since I’m here.

In the quiet solitude of a dark room that looks like storage, I think of Taehyung—his absence sharpens the image of him in my head. What keeps him away? What occupies his time at night? The questions multiply, and my hunger for answers only seems to grow with them.

My resolve to uncover the truth is set. After all, what is a mansion but a house of cards waiting for the slightest breeze to reveal its hand? And I will be that wind. The storm outside is loud and wild.

It's very late, the time when everything is so quiet, waiting for the night to end and the morning to begin. I sit by the window in my room, trying to get lost in a book. The cold glass pressed against my face as I read. But even though I'm looking at the words, the noise of the thunderstorm gets my attention. They sound far away, like a lost warning, and every time lightning flashes, it's as if the night jumps, showing us what it's hiding for just a second.

I feel a chill, and the hair on my neck stands up. That creepy feeling like someone is watching me, following every move I make without making a sound. The book slips from my hands as I look into the dark outside.

Suddenly, whether by luck or some trick, a bolt of lightning lights up the sky, and for a moment, its brightness shows a shadow, a man standing outside in the rain. He's not hiding from the storm or looking for a place to stay dry. He's literally just standing, looking at me through the rain. Taehyung.

He stands, looking scary down there, the rain hitting his broad shoulders, his clothes wet, his hair sticking to his forehead. He doesn't move or seem scared when the thunder booms. He is watching me quietly from below; his look is as heavy as the thick clouds above.