The Broken Dancer

Beneath the Glass

Jimin woke before dawn to a strange light spilling under his door. Not warm, not soft - a cold, blue-white glare that flattened everything it touched. The hallway outside hummed faintly, a low electric throb that hadn't been there before. He lay still, eyes open, breath held, and listened.

There it was again - that sound. The slow drag of shoes on polished floorboards. A deliberate rhythm. Someone walking the corridor.

For a long moment, he couldn't tell if the footsteps were moving closer or simply circling. The walls in this house had always warped sound - built to confuse, to make silence sharper. When he finally pushed himself upright, the room felt smaller somehow. The air tasted of dust and metal.

He crossed to the door, cracked it open just enough to see.

A man stood outside - the same one who had been stationed there since the "incident." But this morning, he didn't even pretend to look away. His gaze slid over Jimin with the cool detachment of someone counting inventory.

"Morning," Jimin said, voice paper-thin.

The man only nodded once. "Breakfast in twenty minutes."

Jimin shut the door quietly. His hand trembled on the knob.

The light in his room was all wrong now. Brighter than before, almost clinical. He scanned the corners, the edges of the walls, and noticed the new camera - small, nearly invisible, but there. Tucked above the doorframe, red diode winking faintly like a heartbeat.

He dressed slowly, every movement deliberate. The house's silence pressed in from all sides - too deliberate to be peace. Even the familiar creaks of the floorboards seemed choreographed now, a soundless orchestra of control.

When he reached the bathroom, he noticed it first - his toothbrush slightly out of place. Tilted the wrong way in its cup. Then his notebook, lying open on his desk where he'd left it closed. A single page turned. His shirt folded differently in the drawer.

It wasn't chaos - it was precision. Someone had been here.

He stood still for a long time, scanning the small, intimate evidence of intrusion. His skin prickled, breath turning shallow. The faint smell of cigarette smoke lingered on his jacket sleeve - one of the guard's smoked, he knew, but never near his door. Never this close.

Someone had searched his room.

He knelt beside the bed, pressing his palm against the floorboard where he'd hidden the burner phone. For one horrible second, he was sure he'd feel nothing - that the space would be empty. But when he pried it up, the phone was still there.

Untouched. Perfectly positioned. Too perfect.

He froze. If they'd found it and left it there... that meant they wanted him to know they could.

He pushed the board back into place and forced himself to stand, heart pounding too loud in the quiet.

Breakfast was the same ritual as always - silent table, silver cutlery, no eye contact. His father wasn't there, but his absence didn't feel like safety. It felt like permission.

The staff moved differently. Less chatter. More eyes. Every plate, every gesture, was controlled. The whole house had adjusted around him like a system recalibrating its orbit.

Jimin picked at his food, barely swallowing. The guard from the hallway lingered near the archway, arms crossed. Watching. Always watching.

When he finally pushed back from the table, the man followed him - not close enough to touch, but close enough to remind him that the leash was still there.