The lamplight was on in every window when I came up the path.

Inside, the music box played its slow tune. Same tune. Same little stumble on the third note.

Yesterday that stumble had made my skin crawl.

Tonight I checked it off a list.

I picked my spot early. The shoe cubbies by the front door, where I could see everyone come in.

Then I stood there and waited to hurt.

* * *

Baek-gu came first, walking his bike, checking over his shoulder twice.

"Ryu Baek-gu-ssi, right? Delivery rider?"

He stopped with one foot still on a pedal.

"...Do I know you?"

"The gloves. The calves. You've got a rider's whole silhouette." I nodded at the bike. "Is she coming in, or standing watch?"

He looked at the bike. Then at me. His shoulders came down an inch.

"She stays out. The company doesn't do indoors."

Twelve hours ago, this man was one of the voices shouting while a fox put two fingers on my shoulder. He would never know that.

It hurt like pressing a bruise.

Good. Hurt meant it was real. Real was the only currency I had.

Insik came up the walk straightening his tie. A tie, at the end of the world. Before he could introduce himself I held out a marker and a pad of construction paper from the cubby shelf.

"You look like a man who keeps count of things."

He took them the way some men take medals.

"Gong Insik. Twenty-nine years in paper goods." He was already ruling columns. "Somebody should have a list of who's here. Nobody ever thinks of the list."

"You did," I said, and had to look away.

The last time I saw him, he was a blank sheet falling, and the fox folded him in half and put him in its pocket.

Breathe. Bruise. Use it.

Yeonhwa took my wrist in the middle of the handshake, two fingers on the pulse, eyes on nothing.

"Hm. Alive," she said. "Stay that way."

Dohyeok and Chae-a arrived arguing about whether you could survive a week on vending machines. Minseo came silent, hugging her elbows, a dead phone in her fist. The Hwangs came hand in hand and did not let go even to step through the door one at a time. They turned sideways instead.

And then Haru.

Yellow windbreaker. She dropped her bag on the mat, looked around at the warm windows, the tiny chairs, the music box.

"At least it's warm. Five stars."

Alive. Loud. Chipped tooth in her grin.

I shoved her clear of that corner and the lamplight dimmed around me instead. She didn't remember, because it never happened. Nobody in this room had ever seen her die, or seen me die, or seen anything at all.

Only me.

"Okay," I said, out loud, to the room. "Before we settle in. Look at the cubbies."

Nine heads turned.

"Third row. Small shoes, dinosaur print. Every other cubby is dusty. That one isn't." I pointed. "There's a kid in this building. Kids hide where the blankets are, so, nap room."

Silence for a second.

"You got all that from shoes," Haru said.

"Shoes don't lie."

"Who is this guy?" She squinted at me. "You're like a man who keeps receipts on the whole world."

"Yun Seojin."

"No. Receipts." She said it like a stamp coming down. "That's yours now. You earned it."

Insik wrote YUN SEOJIN on his list, paused, and added (RECEIPTS) after it. Twenty-nine years in paper goods. The man notarized a joke.

"You. Yellow jacket," I said. "You're the least frightening person here. Go get the kid."

"Rude. Accurate." She was already heading for the hall. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, I found blankets and I live there now."

* * *

She came back in five, leading a small boy by the hand. Name sticker half peeled on his chest. YOON GUREUM. A dinosaur in each fist.

"He had a fort," Haru reported. "Excellent build quality. I had to buy a ticket."

Gureum looked up at nine strangers and said nothing at all.

I crouched by the classroom shelf and pulled the book I already knew was there. Thin, worn at the corners, a rabbit on the cover carrying a lantern. The Moon's Errand.

I held it out to Gureum.

Take it, keep her reading it, the fox can't see anyone who,

Cold flooded up my throat. Ink-cold, rising fast, the taste of a licked stamp. My jaw locked around the sentence and the sentence drowned.

I swallowed. My eyes watered.

"...She does voices," I managed. "If you ask."

The cold drained away. That much, it let me keep.

Gureum looked at the rabbit. Then at Haru.

He took the book.

"I do amazing voices," Haru said. "My moon sounds like a landlord."

Full dark came, and with it, exactly on his cue, Mu-hyeon ducked through the door, axe low, eyes doing a lap of the exits before his feet finished arriving.

"Has everyone eaten? Eat first. Then we talk about this calmly."

The doors swung shut on their own. The lock clicked, neat and small, like a book clasp.

[The Story 'Tag' welcomes 12 participants.]

Twelve, counted right from the start this time. On the chalkboard the chalk rose by itself and began to write, and I mouthed the rules along with it. The fox seeks when the music rests, three times tonight. Reading corners shelter, each corner once. Touched means you leave the Story. Dawn ends it, or finding the fox's face ends it sooner.

I'd heard this song before. I knew where it stumbled.

Mu-hyeon read the board twice. "Corners spend. So we spend them like money." He looked at me. Everyone had somehow gotten around to looking at me. "Receipts. Anything?"

"The music is grace," I said. Chalkboard words. Free words. "When it plays, we move, we set up. When it stops, nobody runs. Running is what it wants."

"And the fastest thing in the room does the standing still," Mu-hyeon said. "Fine. It looks at me first."

* * *

The music wound down mid-phrase.

Geta on the stairs. Wood on wood, patient.

"Are. You. Ready."

A voice like many children pressed into one throat. Every hair on my arms stood up, second printing or not. Some things you don't get used to. You just get to work.

It came through the door the same as before. Adult body. Pressed kindergarten smock. A festival fox mask that curved inward, onto nothing.

Mu-hyeon stepped out into the open floor and knocked his knuckles on a tiny desk, twice.

"Over here."

What came next took fifty minutes and shaved a year off my life anyway. He gave it a shoulder and took it back. He put shelves between them, then took the shelves away like a dare. He was never quite caught and never quite free, and the mask stayed on him, round after round of it, the whole slow lap of the building.

And on the reading rug, in the corner we hadn't spent, Haru read.

"The moon came down the ladder," she read, landlord voice, "because somebody had to fetch the light back, and nobody else was awake."

Gureum sat in the curve of her arm. Minseo sat close with her dead phone. The Hwangs held hands.

The fox crossed the doorway four times.

The mask never turned toward the rug. Not once. Not a degree.

I watched it not turn, and my throat ached with everything I couldn't say. The postscript under the draft's chapter nine, three lines, four hundred and twelve chapters of nobody else ever reading them. The It cannot see one who reads aloud.

I believed it the way you believe a rope while you're on it.

Then the moon in the story lost its shoes in a river, and Gureum laughed.

Out loud. Bright, high, six years old, in the middle of a hunt.

The fox stopped.

Whole room, one held breath. Mu-hyeon's knuckles went white on the axe he knew was useless. The mask hung there, tilted, listening to where a child's laugh had been.

Haru didn't stop reading. Her voice didn't even wobble. She turned the page.

"The river said, finders keepers."

The fox stood in the doorway a moment longer.

It moved on.

Somewhere in the building the music box began again, and my knees informed me they were done pretending.

[Round one has ended. Remaining: 12.]

Twelve. Still twelve. I put my back against the tiny cubbies and breathed like breathing was new.

"Receipts." Haru, across the room, over Gureum's head. "You knew about the book."

"I know she does voices," I said.

"I didn't tell you that."

"Shoes don't lie."

She stared at me a second longer. Filed it. Went back to the moon.

* * *

Round two was coming, and the second floor only had one corner left.

So during grace I climbed the stairs alone, sat down in the middle of the long hallway under the crayon drawings, and opened a picture book of my own.

Bait works best where the hunting is easy. One man, no corner, far from the child. And if the postscript was wrong, better it was wrong about me.

The music died.

I read aloud to nobody. My voice sounded thin in the dark.

"The rabbit carried the lantern," I read, "because a promise is a promise, even at night."

Geta on the stairs.

"Even at night," I read.

Wood on wood, closer. Slow. Patient.

The footsteps came down the hallway and stopped in front of me.

I kept my eyes on the page. I turned it. My hands were almost steady.

Fabric shifted. The smock creased.

The fox crouched down to my level, mask curving inward onto nothing, close enough to kiss.