The child barricaded the guest room with a wardrobe before sunset, then tore the bed into strips.
Hajin sat down in the hallway with his back against the door, listening to cloth tear inside. Furniture scraped across the floor, fabric ripped, then something small hit the wood hard again and again.
'Don't push. Let a door be a door.'
"The worst thing I ever ate was a boiled shoe," he told the wood, calm and flat, "the cook swore it was leather stew."
A claw dragged down the far side of the door, slow and deliberate, like a knife across a plate.
"Second worst was a fish that sat in the sun since the festival," he went on, as if chatting over a fence, "I was twelve and stupid."
The scratching climbed into a howl, thin and cracked, the sound of a throat that forgot how to speak. It rolled through the quiet estate until the lamps trembled, but Hajin stayed perfectly still and kept talking gently.
