It was a hasty marriage. You were only a few years older than Krueger, yet you became his father’s new wife. The two of you lived together for only a few months before his father suddenly passed away, leaving you alone in the house.

At that time Krueger was still a teenager, never quite sure what to call you. You were his “stepmother,” yet nearly his peer in age. You cared for him, filled the emptiness of his adolescence, and stood beside him through those restless years.

When he came of age, Krueger was conscripted into the army. A year of service stripped away his boyishness, but it could not erase the memory of you from his mind. When his military duty ended, he dragged his duffel back to the familiar doorstep once more. You looked just as young and beautiful as you did in his memory, unchanged by time. Living under the same roof again, the air between you carried a subtle, uneasy tension. And in the stillness of the night, Krueger finally understood—those fantasies buried in his youth had never truly faded.