It started with a single flame—quiet, swaying, soft.
Ji-hoon stood at the edge of a rooftop garden that overlooked a courtyard below. The wind was gentle tonight, but there was a nervous flicker in the lanterns that hovered midair, as if they knew. One by one, paper lanterns were being released into the dark velvet of the sky, each glowing orb drifting upwards like a fragile soul escaping a funeral pyre. From this distance, they almost looked peaceful.
But peace was never real. Not for him.
"They're for the dead," Joon-won said behind him, watching the lanterns ascend. "The ones we loved. The ones we lost."
Ji-hoon's throat tightened.
"I know who the next target is," he whispered.
Joon-won turned to him sharply. "You can't be serious. After what happened last time—"
"They were involved." Ji-hoon's voice, though calm, held a storm beneath its surface. "One of the ones who helped hide the truth. Someone who tried to erase her. They lit the match that burned down my world."
The lanterns floated higher, but Ji-hoon couldn't look at them anymore. All he could see were the red swirls of his mother's blood on their old apartment floor. Her unfinished lullaby. The shattered record. The scent of cologne in the rain. These weren't memories. They were open wounds.
He turned away from the rooftop and began walking toward the stairwell, cane in one hand, phone in the other. "I want them cornered by midnight. No exits."
Joon-won caught up, grabbing Ji-hoon's wrist. "Ji-hoon. You're not sleeping. You're not eating. You're shaking when you think no one's watching—"
"Let go," Ji-hoon snapped, wrenching free. "You weren't there when she died."
Silence. Even the wind seemed to falter.
Joon-won stepped back, guilt folding his features. "I just don't want to watch you destroy yourself to catch ghosts."
"She wasn't a ghost to me," Ji-hoon muttered, descending the stairs.
An hour later, the team was in place.
The building was one of those old abandoned performance halls—shuttered, forgotten, dressed in cobwebs and silence. But Ji-hoon could feel it. There were people inside. He didn't need eyes to sense the shift in the air, the way silence crackled when it wasn't truly empty. He had trained his other senses well. He had become a hunter of voices, footsteps, hesitation.
Joon-won gave him the go-ahead through a low whisper in the comms. "Four men inside. He's in the back. Third hallway, left. Stage area."
"Copy," Ji-hoon whispered back.
Ji-hoon slipped through the back entrance. The air reeked of mildew and dust. But beneath that—gun oil, sweat, nervous breathing.
He held his breath, steps soft as a whisper. The cane barely made a sound as he folded it and gripped the edge of the wall. His hand brushed against the flaking plaster, memorizing the layout, calculating steps.
Footsteps. Two men, talking low.
"She said to wait until the drop. Don't move unless he shows up."
"Do you even know who he is?" the second one hissed. "That guy's a damn ghost. Walks like a whisper. Kills without blinking."
Ji-hoon smiled grimly. Good. Let them be afraid.
He moved quickly, pressing his back to the wall, listening. When the moment came, it was instinct.
He swung out, elbow colliding with the first man's throat. The second one turned, gun rising—but Ji-hoon had already ducked, sweeping low and slamming his cane into the man's knee. The crack was audible. A scream followed.
Ji-hoon rose and stepped over them, heart pounding but focused. His fingers brushed the wall again, counting doors.
At the fourth one, he stopped. He could hear breathing—measured, shallow, as if the man inside knew he was coming.
Ji-hoon took a moment. He placed a hand to his chest, grounding himself. His mother's voice flickered somewhere in the back of his mind—soft, warm, gone. Then he opened the door.
It creaked like a scream.
"You're late," the man inside said.
Ji-hoon stepped forward, the light from the street casting his silhouette long and distorted. "So were you. When she begged."
A pause. Then a scoff.
"She was collateral. We all were. You think you're doing justice? You're just playing butcher."
Ji-hoon's jaw clenched. "No. I'm remembering."
He stepped closer.
The man's voice faltered. "You don't even know what she did—what she was part of."
Ji-hoon stopped. His hands trembled, but his voice didn't. "She was my mother."
Silence again. Then a sharp movement.
The man lunged—but Ji-hoon was ready.
He turned just in time, catching the attacker's wrist mid-swing, twisting it violently until the blade dropped. The man screamed and kicked, but Ji-hoon was already on him, knocking him into the wall, fists landing with a decade's worth of grief. He didn't stop. Not when blood splattered. Not when the man cried out. Not until the voice broke—
"Please—stop—I didn't kill her—I swear—I just helped—clean it up—"
Ji-hoon froze, fists hovering.
"What did you say?"
"I just—I just cleaned up the scene. They—paid me. Told me to make it look like an accident. I didn't—"
Ji-hoon's body went cold.
A cleaner.
All this time, he had thought the people he hunted were the killers. But they were just threads—pieces of something larger. His mother's death wasn't random. It was staged. Fabricated. Someone had orchestrated everything.
He stepped back, breathing ragged.
Joon-won's voice came through his comms. "Ji-hoon? What's happening?"
He didn't answer. He just stared, blind eyes fixed on nothing—but seeing everything now.
The lanterns had floated higher than he imagined. But one had caught fire. And like paper, it burned fast.
So would the people who lit the match.
Ji-hoon stood frozen in that room, the man slumped against the wall, bleeding and half-conscious, the floor sticky and silent beneath his shoes. The air smelled like sweat, rust, and something uglier—like betrayal left out too long. For a second, Ji-hoon just stood there, his chest heaving in the cold, dead air of the abandoned hall. His hands hurt. Not from injury, but from memory.
They hadn't killed her. They had erased her.
He remembered now. The way they staged her death as a suicide. The way no one questioned it. The photographs that went missing from her studio. Her music, shelved. Her name, scrubbed off conservatory plaques like she never existed.
They didn't just kill Yoo Ara. They deleted her.
Ji-hoon turned slowly to the man gasping on the ground.
"Who ordered the cleanup?" he asked, voice low, nearly a whisper.
The man coughed, spitting blood. "I—I don't know his name. I never saw his face."
Ji-hoon crouched in front of him, grabbing the front of his shirt. "You knew who she was, and you helped anyway."
"I didn't have a choice!" the man wheezed. "They said if I didn't make it look clean, they'd kill my family. I had kids—what was I supposed to do?"
Ji-hoon's voice turned icy. "Maybe you should've thought about whose family you were helping destroy."
And then he let go, stepping back. He felt sick. Not because of what he'd done—but because it wasn't enough.
Behind him, Joon-won's voice crackled over the comm again. "Ji-hoon. Something's wrong. There's movement around the building. A black van just pulled in behind the alley. You need to get out. Now."
Ji-hoon's head lifted sharply. "Trap?"
"Looks like it. At least six. Maybe more. And they're armed."
Ji-hoon didn't hesitate.
He moved quickly, stepping over the limp body on the floor and pulling his coat tight around him. He reached into his pocket and tapped the small device clipped to his belt—a sonic beacon. Three taps. The signal.
Above the rooftop, two of his guards stirred. Lee Sang-woo and Nam Jin-ho were former military, now privately employed by Ji-hoon after months of grueling tests. He'd hand-picked them not just for strength, but for silence. For precision. For loyalty. And now they moved.
Ji-hoon slipped out the side exit of the performance hall, into the cold bite of the alley air. He was already pulling the map in his mind, counting steps. He couldn't see, but he didn't need to. He remembered every corner of this city by the sound it made when it breathed. The alleyway buzzed faintly—fluorescent light above. Trash bins on his left. A broken drain near the curb.
Then, voices.
"Check the side. He might've slipped out—"
Two men, one heavy footed. Guns in hand.
Ji-hoon dropped low and shifted behind the bins. One of the guards above let off a silent dart—one hiss through the air—and one man crumpled. The other panicked and turned toward the sound.
Ji-hoon stepped forward.
He grabbed the man's wrist mid-panic and twisted it behind his back, slamming him against the brick wall.
"Who sent you?" he asked sharply.
"F-Fuck you," the man spat.
Ji-hoon slammed his head into the wall once. Then again. The man sagged.
"I won't ask again."
"I—I don't know his real name," the man stammered. "But he works with the Conservatory. He's part of the old board. They said—she was getting too close. She found something she wasn't supposed to—"
"What?" Ji-hoon hissed. "What did she find?"
"I don't know. Some file. About a student. A performance that wasn't supposed to happen."
Ji-hoon froze. A file?
He pulled back. His chest tightened. That was the second time he'd heard of this now. Something about a cover-up performance. A recital that vanished from all records. His mother had been investigating it? Why?
Before he could ask more, a shout erupted near the alley's end.
Gunfire. Quick, sharp.
Sang-woo's voice crackled in his ear. "Ji-hoon, we're compromised. Two more incoming from the west side. Get in the car—now!"
Ji-hoon moved without answering. He bolted down the alley, cane swinging, feet memorizing every crack in the pavement. Behind him, bullets zipped past, slicing the air. Another man lunged at him—but Jin-ho tackled him from the side, taking him down in a blur of fists and blood.
By the time Ji-hoon reached the car, his lungs were on fire. He threw open the door, slid in, and slammed it shut. The engine roared.
Joon-won looked back from the driver's seat, eyes wide. "What the hell did you walk into?"
Ji-hoon didn't answer right away. His hands were shaking again. Not from fear. From fury.
"I need everything," he finally said. "Every record the conservatory buried. Especially anything dated around the year she died. Check for student files. Performances. Suspensions. Any faculty names that were removed from the ledger."
Joon-won nodded. "Got it. But you need to slow down. Breathe."
Ji-hoon ignored him.
Outside the window, the last few lanterns drifted skyward. Their soft glow flickered in the night, beautiful and tragic. But one of them—just one—had caught fire.
And it burned alone.
That night, Ji-hoon couldn't sleep.
He lay in his apartment, the silence so deep it hurt. Even the hum of the city below felt distant, like it belonged to someone else's life. The moon cast slanted shadows across the floor, and Ji-hoon lay there with his eyes closed, listening.
There it was again.
The faint, haunting sound of her humming.
At first he thought it was just in his head. But then it grew clearer. A melody only she used to sing, tucked into lullabies at night, hidden in warm hands and forehead kisses and the sound of rice cooking in the kitchen. His mother.
His breath hitched.
He stood slowly, almost like sleepwalking, and walked toward the sound. But there was nothing. No one.
He stood by the window, trembling.
"Why did they kill you?" he whispered to the air. "What were you trying to protect?"
No answer. Only wind.
He reached for the drawer where he kept what little was left of her—a few cracked vinyl records, a scarf, a cassette with her handwriting fading on the label. He hadn't played it in years.
Ji-hoon hesitated, then placed the cassette into the old player. He pressed play.
At first, nothing.
Then a click.
And then her voice.
"Ji-hoon. If you're hearing this… it means I didn't make it."
He staggered back, knees hitting the edge of the bed.
"I don't have much time. They're watching me. But I found something. A performance. It wasn't just a concert—it was a cover. They were testing something. A project involving a boy who—"
The tape hissed.
Static.
Then—
"If anything happens to me, go to Room 507. Conservatory basement. The file's hidden in the wall, behind the broken panel."
Ji-hoon's hand clenched so tightly around the player, he nearly crushed it.
Room 507.
His next target.
His next answer.
The lanterns may have floated upward into the sky. But Ji-hoon was still here, still burning from the inside out.
And now, finally, he knew which flame to follow.