Chapter Sixteen: Fractures
Time: 8:17 PM
Location: A rooftop parking lot, Mapo-gu
The Seoul skyline flickered below like a half-broken circuit board—alive, but unstable.
Eunha stood at the edge of the rooftop, scanning the windows of the surrounding buildings. She hadn't told anyone where she was going. Not even her sister, not even her old editor. The fewer who knew, the safer it was.
She had risked everything by reaching out to Ji-hoon.
Until now, he had ignored every message. Blocked numbers. Fake accounts. Dead ends.
But earlier that day, a simple envelope had been slid under her apartment door.
No name. No note. Only a single photograph inside.
Sae-jin, sitting in what looked like a hospital bed — eyes open, staring toward the camera. A newspaper dated March 3rd sat on the table beside her.
That was four weeks ago.
She was alive.
Ji-hoon stepped out from the stairwell behind her.
His eyes were bloodshot, but his posture was composed. Controlled. Like a man barely holding himself together.
> "You saw the photo?" he asked.
> "I did. And I need to know where you got it."
He hesitated. "Someone from her old staff. A stylist, I think. But they wouldn't speak. Just passed it to me and told me not to ask."
> "Then we ask anyway," Eunha said. "We need names. Records. Anyone connected to her transfer contract."
> "You know they scrubbed those. Aura's legal team burned through two agencies. They paid off her psychiatrist."
> "I don't care," she said, stepping closer. "I don't care how buried it is. If we can prove she's alive, the entire foundation of Aura's defense crumbles. All their silence payments, all their PR — it means nothing if she walks into the light."
Ji-hoon looked down, rubbing his hands together like he was trying to scrub guilt from them.
> "You still believe she wants to come back?"
> "No," Eunha said. "But I believe she deserves the choice."
That hit him.
The wind picked up, scattering a few loose sheets from Eunha's bag across the pavement. Ji-hoon caught one — a partial document, stained at the corner.
It was an old internal memo:
Subject: Operation Eclipse
Instructions: Reassign talent and suppress third-party claims. Deploy narrative.
His grip tightened.
> "I saw this phrase before. In Sae-jin's notebook."
> "You have her notebook?"
> "Just a page," he said. "The rest was destroyed."
They stood in silence, the city humming in oblivion beneath them.
Then Eunha spoke again.
> "Tomorrow. Gyeongbokgung. Midnight. We share everything we've got. No filters. No edits. We move together from now on."
Ji-hoon nodded slowly.
> "Together, then."
Neither of them noticed the unmarked van idling across the street. Nor the glint of a camera lens peering from behind a billboard.
They weren't just chasing ghosts anymore.
They were being watched.