In Korean folklore, an imugi

In Korean folklore, an imugi is a black serpent that waits a thousand years to become a dragon. The pearl is what finally turns it. This site lives in the moment just before the claw closes, and it's my mood as a maker: unfinished on purpose, still drawing one more scale.

How it unfolds

序 · The hanging scroll. An ink painting hangs on a candlelit temple wall. A WebGL shader bleeds the ink outward from the serpent's head across the paper, then its eyes and pearl start to breathe red.

千 · A thousand years. Scroll and the camera dives into the painting, stopping at five scenes: the pond (year 1), the falls (300), the moon (600), the scales (900), the pearl (999). The painting is alive: water ripples, the waterfall runs, mist drifts, embers rise from the pearl, and the imugi itself moves. I traced its body by hand so a wave runs from head to tail while the claw holding the pearl stays still. Ink floods the screen between scenes, and every caption writes itself in, character by character.

記 · On the margin. A sheet of hanji on a writing desk by candlelight. The closing note brushes itself onto the paper, and a red seal stamps it at the end.

瓦 · One roof tile. At Korean temples, visitors write a wish on a roof tile before it goes up on the roof. Here you write your line on a real tile, raise it, and it flies to an empty place on a temple roof under the full moon. There are 140 places, and the roof fills from the eaves up. Hover any tile to lift it up close and hang its line on the temple signboard. The wind bells at the corners sway, and they ring when you touch them.

終 · And now. The pearl is still at the tip of the claw.

> Built with Base44

- GuestTile entity with row-level security: anyone can write and read, nobody can edit, and only I can delete.

- Realtime subscription, so a tile raised by another visitor lands on your roof while you watch.

- Deployed with the Base44 CLI, a React frontend and WebGL shaders written by hand.

- Bilingual (Korean / English), responsive down to phones, with a reduced-motion version.

- Optional ambient sound (wind, water, singing bowls, a small temple bell), synthesized in the browser with no audio files.

> Tools and credits

- Hero painting: the ink dragon from my portfolio (portfolio.auraseoul.kr)

- Temple roof, roof tile, signboard, hall wall and desk photos: Higgsfield (GPT Image 2.5). The 140 roof places were fitted to the tile rows in the photo.

- Built with Base44, with Claude as my coding partner

Leave a line on the roof. 🔗 https://imugi-yeobaek-d5c3d7aa.base44.app