The letter arrived on a damp autumn morning, written in the trembling hand of the village priest. “Your mother has passed,” it said. No cause, no comfort — only a date and a signature. By the time Jungkook reached the estate, three months had already passed since her burial.

He had left home ten years ago, after an argument that neither of them had the strength to mend. Since then, he had lived in the capital, serving as an officer, moving between barracks and cold apartments, pretending he had no family left.

The house stood at the edge of the sea — an old, stone manor built by his grandfather, half-swallowed by fog and salt. Its shutters hung crooked, the garden overgrown, and the iron gate groaned as he pushed it open.

The villagers had long avoided this place. They said the lady of the house had lost her mind in her final years — that she spoke to someone unseen, that candles burned in her room even when no one was inside. Jungkook dismissed it as superstition.

Until the first night, when he saw the faint glow of a candle behind her window. In the room that had been locked since her death.