Nana didn't move.
The voice from behind her bedroom door threw her thoughts into chaos.
It really was a child's voice.
But not an ordinary child's voice.
It sounded like her own voice when she was little.
"Nana..."
The call came again.
Dita stood beside Nana, her face tense.
"Are you sure that's your voice?"
Nana nodded slowly.
"I don't know what to say. But I feel like I've heard that voice before."
Dita looked at the bedroom door.
"Don't open it yet."
Nana stared at the doorknob.
A powerful urge pushed her to open it and find out what was inside. But she also remembered what had happened before. She had no idea what was behind that door.
Suddenly, the voice came again.
"You promised you'd come back."
Nana froze.
The words made her head ache.
A small shadow appeared in her mind.
A little girl stood in a hallway.
Someone was holding her hand.
And an old door stood open.
Nana clutched her head.
"Nana!"
Dita immediately grabbed her shoulders.
"What's wrong?"
"I... I think I saw something."
"What?"
Nana tried to remember.
"I saw myself when I was little."
Dita fell silent.
"What did you see?"
Nana drew a breath.
"I was standing in front of that room."
She pointed toward the door.
"Then there was someone with me."
"Who?"
Nana shook her head.
"I don't know."
Before they could say anything else, the voice behind the door stopped.
Then they heard footsteps.
Slowly.
Moving away.
Nana mustered her courage and approached the door.
Dita immediately stopped her.
"Nana, don't."
"I have to know."
"But..."
"I've been avoiding this for too long."
Nana opened her bedroom door.
There was no one there.
The hallway was empty.
But a small object lay on the floor in front of the door.
A bracelet.
Nana picked it up.
Her eyes immediately widened.
She recognized it.
"That's..."
Dita stepped closer.
"What?"
Nana held up the bracelet.
"I used to have this."
"Are you sure?"
Nana nodded.
"Mom said it went missing when I was little."
Dita looked at the bracelet.
"Then someone deliberately left it here."
Nana didn't answer.
She only stared at the bracelet.
A name was carved into a small part of it.
"Nana."
That night, Nana opened Rani's book again.
This time, she searched for something about the bracelet.
She carefully turned through the old pages.
At last, she found a note.
"June 14."
Nana read Rani's handwriting.
"Today I found little Nana in that room. She was holding her bracelet and kept saying that someone had asked her to play."
Nana stopped reading.
Dita looked at her face.
"That's about you."
Nana continued.
"She said that person lived behind the door. She said the person always knocked before coming in."
Nana's hands began to tremble.
She read the next page.
"But what frightened me wasn't the person's existence. What frightened me was that little Nana said something she couldn't possibly have known."
Nana turned the page.
The next line left her speechless.
"She said, 'Rani, don't go in. You'll be called too.'"
Dita covered her mouth.
"So you'd heard the knocking before?"
Nana stared blankly ahead.
"I don't remember."
They continued reading.
One page looked different from the others.
Rani's handwriting was very short.
"Nana wasn't the first to hear the knocking."
Nana furrowed her brow.
"What does that mean?"
There was another line written beneath it.
"The first person to hear it was a former resident of this house."
Nana looked at her mother, who had just entered the room.
"Mom."
Her mother stopped.
"You're reading that book?"
Nana nodded.
"You have to tell me everything."
Her mother looked exhausted.
"It's time."
Nana closed the book.
"What's really in this house?"
Her mother sat down slowly.
"Before this house belonged to our family, another family lived here."
"And then?"
"There was a little girl in that family."
"What was her name?"
Her mother looked at the floor.
"Her name was Mira."
Nana waited.
"Mira often said she heard knocking from the back room."
"The same room?"
Her mother nodded.
"But no one believed her."
"Then what happened?"
Her mother drew a breath.
"One night, Mira disappeared."
The room immediately fell silent.
Nana looked at her mother.
"How did she disappear?"
"No one knows. Her family searched everywhere. Until finally, they found one thing."
"What?"
Her mother looked toward the second floor.
"Mira was last seen entering that room."
Nana fell silent.
Dita spoke slowly.
"So that room had a story even before Rani."
Her mother nodded.
"Yes."
Nana looked at the bracelet in her hand.
"Then why is that voice calling me now?"
No one answered.
Because they all had the same question.
The night grew later.
Nana stood in front of her bedroom window.
She looked at the old house in the darkness.
All this time, she'd thought she was searching for the house's secrets.
But now she was beginning to realize something.
Maybe the house had known her since she was little.
Suddenly, a sound came from the second floor.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Nana turned.
This time, the knocking didn't sound frightening.
It sounded more like someone asking for help.
Nana looked at Rani's book on the table.
There was a new page that had been blank before.
Even though she was certain there hadn't been any writing on it.
Nana slowly approached.
A sentence had appeared on the page.
"You're finally back, Nana."
Nana froze.
Because the handwriting wasn't Rani's.
It wasn't her mother's, either.
The writing looked as if it had just been made.
And beneath the sentence was another message.
"Don't make me wait any longer."