The dream came gently.
Like a breath he didn't know he was holding. Like a slow wave crawling over the sand before it swallowed the shore.
Ji-hoon didn't remember falling asleep. His body had collapsed on the couch at some ungodly hour, the cassette still spinning on the player, her voice long since faded into white noise. His cane leaned against the table like it, too, was exhausted. His heartbeat had only just slowed. But when the dream crept in, it didn't knock. It simply took him.
And for the first time in his life since losing sight, he saw.
Not in a symbolic way. Not through memory or emotion or the fuzzy synesthetic patterns his brain created to cope with blindness. No. This was vision. Real and impossible. Vivid and horrifying. Color, shape, light—he saw it all. As if the universe decided, for one night only, to remind him of what was stolen.
He stood in the middle of a room he didn't recognize. White tiles. Cold fluorescent lighting. Echoes. A corridor stretched ahead, long and sterile like a hospital wing or a government facility. Doors on both sides. Closed. His fingers twitched at his sides.
Then, a sound. Footsteps.
Ji-hoon turned.
And there he was.
The man.
He walked with a calm confidence, hands folded neatly behind his back. His suit was sharp. His shoes silent. His hair graying at the temples, but not from age—he was the kind of man whose hair grayed from power, from secrets that coiled around his life like smoke. But it wasn't those things that shook Ji-hoon to his core.
It was the smile.
Polite. Thin. Controlled. The kind of smile that belonged on magazine covers and press conferences. A public relations smile. A mask. A perfect, poisoned curve of the mouth that made Ji-hoon's stomach twist violently.
He didn't know how he knew.
But he knew.
This was one of them. One of the men who orchestrated Yoo Ara's erasure. Who stood in a room while she bled on the floor. Who ordered photos burned and files destroyed. Who smiled while it happened.
"Ji-hoon," the man said, voice smooth like radio silk. "I've been waiting to meet you."
Ji-hoon's breath caught. "Who are you?"
The man didn't answer. He only walked closer.
Each step echoed with a deep sense of wrongness, like watching a spider walk backward or hearing laughter in a cemetery.
"I see her in you," the man said, eyes scanning Ji-hoon's face like a butcher sizing up meat. "She had that same fire. That same... foolish belief that truth wins."
Ji-hoon's hands curled into fists. "You killed her."
The man tilted his head, amused. "That word. Killed. Such an ugly, imprecise thing. We ended a story that was going to ruin far more than you'll ever understand."
"She was my mother."
"She was a liability."
Ji-hoon felt something snap in his chest. The dream began to throb now—warping, vibrating like a violin string pulled too tight.
"You watched her die," Ji-hoon whispered. "Did you smile then, too?"
The man didn't flinch. "I smile because I'm never afraid to do what needs to be done."
Ji-hoon's vision blurred—not from the dream, but from rage.
He charged.
But before he reached him, the walls began to shift. The floor cracked. The hallway melted into shadow. And suddenly Ji-hoon was falling—through darkness, through memory, through grief.
And then—
He woke up.
Gasping.
Drenched in sweat.
His hands shaking, his cheeks wet. He hadn't realized he'd been crying in his sleep.
He sat up, pressing his palms to his face. His breath came fast, short, broken. His mouth tasted like metal.
He could still feel it. The dream. The air. The man's voice. And most of all, that smile.
It haunted him.
Not because it was terrifying. But because it felt familiar.
Somewhere in the deepest cracks of his subconscious, he knew that face.
Not just as an enemy.
But from somewhere real. A day. A moment. Something buried.
He needed to find him.
He staggered to his feet, moved to his desk, and pulled out the collection of notes, clippings, and confidential files Joon-won had helped him compile over the last month. Most of it was old. Useless. Shuffled names, faculty members, donors, and trustees of the conservatory.
Then he found it.
A donor photo.
A banquet from ten years ago.
A smiling man, shaking hands with the head of the conservatory.
Ji-hoon's heart stopped.
That smile.
Even in black and white, he recognized it. That same precise, surgically polite smirk.
Ji-hoon traced the name under the caption with shaking fingers.
Min Dae-hyun.
Ji-hoon sat down hard.
He remembered now.
When he was a child—six, maybe seven—his mother had taken him to a gala. A performance fundraiser. He'd been nervous, clutching her hand tightly the whole time, wearing a stiff tuxedo he hated. There were long speeches and clinking wine glasses and people who pretended not to notice the blind boy with perfect pitch.
But there was one man who did notice him.
He bent down and shook Ji-hoon's hand.
"You're Yoo Ara's boy, aren't you?" he'd said.
Ji-hoon had nodded shyly.
"Your mother's a brilliant woman," he had said with that smile. "But sometimes brilliance needs... guidance."
That was the same man.
That was Min Dae-hyun.
And now Ji-hoon knew exactly what to do.
He grabbed his phone and called Joon-won.
It rang once before a groggy voice answered. "Dude—it's five in the morning—"
"Min Dae-hyun," Ji-hoon said breathlessly. "I saw him. In a dream. I saw his face. It was clear. I saw him, Joon-won."
There was silence on the line.
"You... saw him?"
"Yes. In a dream. Like—like I could actually see again. His face. That smile. I know it was him."
Joon-won didn't question the dream. He didn't mock or doubt. He only said, "I'll dig. I'll get you everything."
Ji-hoon hung up and sat in silence.
The sun was beginning to rise.
And suddenly he realized something terrifying.
He didn't want justice anymore.
He wanted blood.
He spent the morning pacing.
Every few steps, he would stop mid-stride, as if his thoughts had caught him by the collar. The apartment was filled with scattered remnants of a sleepless night—the cassette still sitting idle in the player, a cup of untouched tea long gone cold, and a crumpled photograph in his hand. Ji-hoon couldn't bring himself to sit. Sitting felt passive. And nothing about his body felt passive now. His muscles were alive with something more than adrenaline—something older. Something primal.
He had always imagined revenge as a distant, smoldering ember. Something that glowed in the back of his mind, quiet and poetic, waiting for the right moment to flare. But this wasn't poetic. This was ugly. It was heavy and clawing and soaked in his mother's blood.
The dream had dug its nails deep into him. Seeing that man—Min Dae-hyun—was like being dragged underwater and shown how long you could scream before you drowned. He couldn't stop hearing his voice. He couldn't forget the way he had spoken her name with that delicate, disgusting casualness, like she was a file in a cabinet. Like her life was just a decision on a whiteboard.
He stood by the window, hearing the early traffic growl like distant thunder. Even the birds sounded cruel this morning.
In the back of his mind, Ji-hoon wondered: was he going mad?
Dreams didn't give you answers. Not like this. Dreams weren't supposed to show you things. But then again, nothing about Ji-hoon's life had been normal since that night. Since the murder. Since the stage lights went out. He didn't believe in divine signs, but this? This was more than just coincidence. It was a door. One he couldn't afford not to walk through.
When Joon-won arrived, he didn't knock. He never did. He came in, dropped a manila folder on the table, and just looked at Ji-hoon.
"I didn't ask questions," he said. "Didn't need to."
Ji-hoon picked up the folder with both hands like it was something sacred. Inside: articles, old donation records, grainy photos, transcripts from interviews.
"Min Dae-hyun," Joon-won said, tone clipped. "Major pharmaceutical executive. Tied to two government officials. Donated big to the conservatory in 2012 and again in 2014. Known for lobbying against mental health transparency laws. Paid off a harassment case five years ago—hushed. Real hush. There's more. But I didn't want to print it out. I wanted you to hear it first."
Ji-hoon sat. His knees suddenly didn't trust him.
"He's not just rich," Joon-won continued. "He's protected. Layers of shell companies, anonymous donations, private security. You don't just go knocking on this guy's door."
"I don't want to knock," Ji-hoon murmured. "I want him to feel what my mother felt."
The air between them thickened.
Joon-won leaned forward. "Ji-hoon... if you're going to do this, really do this—you need more than fire. You need strategy. You need to be smarter than him."
"I've been smart my whole life," Ji-hoon whispered. "And where did it get me? A dead mother. A ruined stage. A life in shadows."
"That dream—"
"I saw him, Joon-won." Ji-hoon's voice cracked like a whip. "I saw. For the first time in years, I saw. Don't tell me that means nothing."
Joon-won was quiet.
Then, gently: "I'm not saying it means nothing. I'm saying it means everything. That kind of clarity... maybe it's your mind waking up to what your heart's been screaming."
Ji-hoon rubbed his eyes, fingers trembling. "Then help me. Please."
Joon-won nodded slowly. "I'll make the call."
That night, Ji-hoon met with the handlers.
Men and women trained not to ask questions. They sat at the corner table of an old, dimly lit billiards bar that didn't take cards and didn't smile at strangers. Their leader—a woman with a half-burned cigarette and a scar that split her brow—listened without blinking. Ji-hoon gave her the names. Every one of them tied to Min Dae-hyun's network. Some directly. Others hidden under aliases, offshore accounts, backdoor investments.
He didn't know how Joon-won got all the information. And he didn't care.
"These people helped erase her," Ji-hoon said, voice quiet but razor-sharp. "Don't let them keep living like they did nothing."
The woman nodded once. "You want them disappeared?"
"No," Ji-hoon said after a pause. "I want them remembered. Let the world see their fall."
She smiled, the cigarette twitching between her teeth. "That can be arranged."
What followed were days of silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that hung over him like a guillotine. The kind that felt like the moment before lightning splits the sky.
And then, one morning, the news hit.
The first man—a lawyer who had buried the reports surrounding Ara's death—was found in a parking garage, slumped over the steering wheel of his BMW, heart stopped mid-breath. No signs of struggle. No witnesses. But the camera footage? Gone. Wiped clean like it never existed.
The second—a board member of the conservatory—disappeared on his way to a private yacht gathering. They found his body floating near the dock, eyes wide open, mouth twisted like it tried to scream one last time. A single white flower stuffed in his jacket pocket.
The third—the police officer who falsified the autopsy report—vanished completely. Not a trace. Not even a bloodstain.
Each one sent a message.
To Ji-hoon, they were justice in motion.
To the city, they were whispers of fear.
But to Min Dae-hyun?
They were footsteps.
Coming closer.
Ji-hoon watched the chaos unfold from the safety of his silent apartment. He listened to the journalists try to find a pattern. He heard the panic in the voices of men who used to think themselves untouchable.
And deep in his chest, something uncurled.
It wasn't peace.
It wasn't even relief.
But it was something.
That night, Ji-hoon lay in bed, fingers brushing the cassette tape that still sat beside his pillow.
He pressed play.
And her voice filled the room.
Soft. Tender. Unafraid.
"Someday, you'll understand," she said. "Why I chose music over silence. Why I chose truth, even when it hurt."
Ji-hoon closed his eyes.
"I understand now," he whispered.
But he wasn't done yet.
Min Dae-hyun was still alive.
And somewhere inside him, Ji-hoon knew—
that man still smiled.
And Ji-hoon would be the one to wipe it off his face.