The music box in apartment 203 was playing with the lid CLOSED

I wasn't going to post this but I still can't sleep right so here we go.

So I used to live in this old apartment complex in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul. The place was scheduled for redevelopment so like 90% of the units were already empty. At night the hallways were DEAD silent. The kind of silent where you can hear your own heartbeat.

Right after I moved in I started hearing about this one unit. 203. Right next to mine btw.

The rumor was that nobody had lived there for years, but every night you could hear an old music box playing. I figured it was just neighbor noise at first. Except. Every single night. 3am on the dot. 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' would start playing. Super slow. Super sad. Like the wind-up was dying.

And it was DEFINITELY coming from 203.

I even went out into the hallway once and knocked on the door. Nothing. No footsteps, no nothing. The door had dust piled on it. The nameplate was rusted through. Nobody had touched that door in YEARS.

After like a week of no sleep I finally went down to the management office and asked about it. The guy just sighed. He was like "203... it's empty. Well. It became empty."

And then he told me the story.

About 10 years ago a family lived in 203. Mom, dad, little daughter. The girl apparently LOVED 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,' always humming it, and she had this old music box she got for her birthday that she treated like it was sacred.

One day the mom left the kid home alone. Kid caught a cold. Fever spiked. She died. Alone. On the floor.

They didn't find her body for days. When they did she was lying on the cold bare floor clutching the music box in her tiny hand.

Nobody's lived in 203 since.

I got chills just listening to him. Like. That sound torturing me every night was a dead child???

After that I couldn't even walk past 203 without my stomach dropping. But then THAT night happened.

The music box started like always. But this time the melody just. Stopped. Cut off mid-note. And in the silence where the music used to be, I could hear a kid crying. Quietly. Sniffling.

I covered my ears. I was like why is it different tonight, is the music box broken??

And then I heard it. *creeeeak.*

The door to 203. The one that hadn't been opened in a DECADE. Was open. Just a crack. And there was light coming out of it.

I don't know why I walked toward it. I genuinely don't. Curiosity and terror at the same time is a weird drug.

I peeked through the crack. The room was packed with a kid's stuff. Old dolls, faded picture books, and in the middle of the room on a little table. The music box. Playing Twinkle Twinkle.

With the lid CLOSED.

How. HOW is it making sound with the lid closed.

And then the music stopped. And I heard a whisper.

"Mommy... the music box is broken..."

I could not move. That was a child's voice. A real child's voice. And then the lid of the music box started opening. By itself. Slowly. I wanted to scream but nothing came out.

The second the lid opened all the way, what came out wasn't Twinkle Twinkle. It was this awful grinding mechanical sound mixed with someone sobbing.

I ran. I don't even remember running. I just know I was back in my apartment with the door locked and I never looked at 203 again.

But here's the part that actually broke me.

A few days later this old halmeoni¹ from the second floor was talking to me in the elevator and she brought up 203. And she told me a DIFFERENT version of the story.

She said the mom didn't "leave the kid alone by accident." She said the mom abandoned her. On purpose. The kid got sick, the fever got worse, and the mom just. Left. Walked out and never came back. The kid died waiting for her.

And that's when it hit me.

The music box stopping. The crying. "Mommy the music box is broken." The lid opening on its own.

She wasn't asking her mom to fix it.

She was trying to go OUTSIDE. To find her.

And if I had opened that door that night... if I had stepped inside...

She might have thought I was mommy coming home.

I still lock my door twice every night. I don't know why. I just do.