Closed shoe repair shop. Black plastic bag. Every single night.

I wasn't going to post this but it's been sitting with me for two years and I need people to know.

Summer 2023. I was doing an internship at a small publishing company in Gwangju's Dong-gu district, commuting every day down Chungjang-ro. Normal street. Old storefronts, a few cafes, the usual. One of the shops on my route was this tiny shoe repair place. Faded sign, old flyers peeling off the walls, shutter pulled all the way down. You could tell just by looking at it that nobody had been in there for years.

But every night, there was a black plastic bag sitting right in front of that shutter.

Same spot. Same bag. Every. Single. Night.

I figured at first it was just a homeless person or someone dumping trash. But then the next day it was back. Same position. Same shape. And the day after. And after. The exact same bag in the exact same place like someone was placing it there on PURPOSE.

So one night after work I just... waited. I sat across the street and I waited.

Past midnight, I saw someone walking toward the shop from down the road. Short old man. Black suit, hat. He walked up, set the bag down quietly, stared at the shop door for a moment.

And then he was gone. Under a minute total.

I couldn't leave it alone. A few days later I went back and opened the bag.

Inside: one old men's dress shoe. Just the one. And folded up inside the shoe was a handwritten note.

"Is it fixed yet? Leaving it here again today."

I reported it to the police. They basically said it wasn't worth dealing with and sent me away.

So I started asking around the neighborhood. Told an older local guy what I'd seen. He went completely still when I described the shop.

"There was an old man who used to run that place," he said. "Worked late every night, never closed early. One day they found him collapsed inside. Dead. People say some of his old customers still come by. The ones who left shoes to be repaired."

I felt it go cold down my spine.

And then recently I saw this posted on someone's SNS:

"Has anyone else noticed the black bags in front of that shoe repair shop on Chungjang-ro every night? Tonight there were TWO. But... something moved inside the shop. The shutter was definitely down."