THE KNOCK THAT CHANGE EVERYTHING [ HEEJAKE FF]

There’s a moment small, often unnoticed where the ordinary fractures.

A breath between one heartbeat and the next. A space where fate holds its breath, and something bigger slips quietly into your life without warning. For Jake, that moment began with a knock.

But before that?
His life was painfully, excruciatingly still.

Jake had always been the kind of person who slipped through the cracks. Not forgotten, exactly but easy to miss. The type who sat near the window in crowded rooms, who never raised his voice, who left early so no one would notice he was even there. He worked at a coffee shop, paid his rent on time, recycled when he remembered, and bought his groceries on Tuesdays when the store was least crowded.

There was no tragedy in his past. No shocking betrayal. No epic backstory. Just time. Time that moved, day by day, year by year, without ever really touching him. Like he was watching life from behind a pane of glass.

He didn’t mind the silence anymore.
He had gotten used to eating dinner alone, to coming home to nothing but the hum of old appliances and the scratch of rain against the windows. There was no one waiting for him, and no one he waited for.

And then on a night too quiet to mean anything someone knocked on his door.

At first, he didn’t move. Just stood there, toothbrush in hand, staring at the door like it had grown eyes. It was late. The city outside was asleep, wrapped in its own dreams. No footsteps echoed down the hall. No shadows moved beneath the light.

Just two knocks. Soft. Hesitant.

Jake opened the door.

No one was there.

Only the sound of distant thunder and the faint scent of something strange like wildflowers in the rain.

And then he heard it.

A soft noise. Not a cry. Not a coo. Something in between a sound that curled in his chest and gripped his spine with cold fingers.

He looked down.

A bundle lay there, wrapped in white cloth, barely moving. Something stirred inside it. And when Jake knelt down, heart pounding in his ears, the bundle shifted... and opened its eyes.

Bright gold. Glowing. Not quite human.

The baby stared at him like it already knew him. Like it had been waiting for him.

A small tail flicked behind it. Tiny ears twitched atop its head. And something sharp tiny claws glinted in the hallway light as it reached out and touched Jake’s knee.

There was a note tucked beneath the blanket. Scrawled quickly. Urgently.

"His name is heeseung. He’s yours now."

Jake didn’t move for a long time.
The wind outside howled through the hallway window, but everything in his world had gone still.

This was the moment.

The space between the heartbeat he thought was his last and the one that would start the rest of his life.

And behind one door... an entire world was about to open.