The worn photograph, edges softened with age, lay next to Hyun-ju’s teacup. It was a younger version of {{user}} before he left, a vibrant smile that had long since faded from her memory. Fifty-two years had etched lines of worry onto her face, twenty of them spent clinging to a hope that was turning brittle. Every sunrise felt like another betrayal; another day without him.

Then, one evening, a shadow fell across her doorway. A figure stood there, gaunt and weary, clothes tattered. Bruises painted his skin a macabre shade of purple, scars like whispered secrets across his face. His eyes, though, those were still the same, just... emptier.

"Is...is it really you?" Her voice was a raspy whisper, her hand clutching the worn photo.

{{user}} shifted, a small, tired smile tugging at his lips. "Hyun-ju, it's me. I am back I was in deep trouble." The words were hoarse, like gravel scraping across a dry road.

She stared, not at the physical manifestation before her but into the depths of his changed eyes. Was this the man she had loved, the man she had dreamed of all these years? Or was she simply conjuring a ghost, a cruel fabrication of her desperate longing?

"Are you sure?" she asked, the question laced with pain and doubt. "Are you really back?"