The Vanishing Name

Ji-Hoon stared at the ringing phone, his hand hovering over the receiver. The screen remained blank—no number, no caller ID. Just the sound, sharp and insistent, cutting through the silence of his apartment.

His heart pounded. 1:13 AM.

A second passed. Then another.

The phone stopped ringing.

Ji-Hoon let out a slow breath, his body tense. He should have picked it up. Or maybe he shouldn’t have. Either way, he wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight.

Instead of going back to bed, he grabbed a notebook and scribbled down the words from the answering machine.

"You are not who you think you are."

The phrase sat on the page like an accusation. His mind raced with possibilities—a prank? A threat? A warning?

Whatever it was, it didn’t feel random.

The next morning, Ji-Hoon was back at the newspaper office, drinking his fourth coffee of the day and scrolling through the crime archives. His gut told him this phone call was more than a prank, but he had no proof. He needed something—a pattern, a previous case, anything that could make sense of what had happened.

“Working on another dead-end piece?” a voice interrupted.

Ji-Hoon looked up to see Min-Soo, a fellow journalist, leaning against his desk with a smirk. He was the type of reporter who always found himself on the front page, mostly because he had connections in all the wrong places.

Ji-Hoon ignored the jab. “I need access to old police reports. Anything weird involving payphones.”

Min-Soo raised an eyebrow. “What, you got a haunted phone story now? That won’t sell unless there’s a murder or a missing person.”

Ji-Hoon clenched his jaw. That was the problem—there was no case. No crime. Just a voice on the phone that had no reason to exist.

Still, he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Just let me know if you hear anything,” Ji-Hoon said.

Min-Soo shrugged. “Sure. But if your ghost story flops, don’t come crying to me.”

Ji-Hoon turned back to his screen and kept searching.

By afternoon, Ji-Hoon had nothing. No strange reports, no past cases, nothing involving mysterious payphones or untraceable calls.

Frustrated, he switched tactics. If he couldn’t find a case, he could at least check the payphone itself. Maybe it was a malfunctioning line or set up for illegal activity. Something logical.

After finishing up at the office, he made his way back to the alley where the phone had first rung. The street was just as empty as the night before.

Except this time, the payphone was gone.

Ji-Hoon stopped in his tracks. His breath caught in his throat.

The booth—the one that had been standing here for years, abandoned and covered in graffiti—was missing.

He stepped forward, his hands running over the cold concrete wall where the booth had been attached. There was no sign it had ever been there. No marks, no wires, no bolts in the ground. Just empty space.

His pulse raced.

Was he losing his mind?

He turned, scanning the street, half-expecting someone to be watching him. But no one paid him any attention. Cars rolled by. A businessman checked his watch. A group of students laughed as they walked past.

It was as if the payphone had never existed.

Ji-Hoon took out his notebook, flipping to the page where he had written the phrase from the phone call. His fingers shook slightly as he reread it.

"You are not who you think you are."

For the first time, he felt real fear.

Something was wrong.

And he had no idea how deep it went.

That night, Ji-Hoon made a decision.

He wasn’t going to let this drop. He was a journalist—he chased the truth. Even if the truth was twisting reality itself.

But as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, his mind full of unanswered questions, his phone rang again.

1:13 AM.

This time, he picked it up.

And the voice whispered: