The room was freezing.
Not in the way that made you shiver—but in the kind of cold that seeped beneath your skin and stayed there. Ji-hoon had grown used to it. His fingertips didn't flinch anymore when they touched the keys. The room didn't welcome him, and it didn't try to push him away. It just waited.
He sat in front of the piano like a man returning to a grave.
Every breath he took fogged faintly in the air, and yet his hands remained steady—wrapped in thin gloves, fingertips worn from hours of playing without rest. The blindfold around his eyes wasn't necessary anymore, but he still wore it. Some part of him needed the darkness.
He was alone again. Not in the literal sense—people hovered around his life like moths to something burning—but in the way that made silence louder.
It had been days since the last performance. Weeks since Ji-eun's voice cracked as she asked him whether he was okay and then never followed up.
And months—months since the truth tore out his lungs and left him breathing smoke.
They still whispered about Ara in backstage corners. He didn't respond. Not once.
He hadn't spoken her name since the day he buried the song.
But the cold hadn't left him.
A knock came—gentle, like whoever stood behind the door didn't want to disturb the memories.
"Ji-hoon?" It was Joon-won's voice.
He didn't answer.
The door creaked open anyway.
"You haven't returned my calls," Joon-won said, stepping in. His voice was rough from concern, his coat still dusted with snow. "You alright?"
Ji-hoon tilted his head. "Define 'alright.'"
Joon-won didn't smile. "You're freezing in here."
"I know."
Joon-won sighed and crossed the room, dragging over a space heater and turning it on with a reluctant groan. "It's like you want pneumonia."
Ji-hoon said nothing. His fingers were already resting on the piano again. Searching for something he hadn't written yet. Some melody that might thaw what was left.
"You haven't played for anyone since the last encore," Joon-won said after a while. "They're asking questions."
"I'm not here to answer them."
Joon-won hesitated. "There's a concert next month. Seoul Philharmonic wants you."
Ji-hoon didn't flinch. "Then let them want."
The heater buzzed quietly. Warmth started crawling through the air, but Ji-hoon remained still, wrapped in cold. Like the grief had become a second skin.
Joon-won finally said it.
"You know they still talk about her. Ara."
Ji-hoon's hands paused.
"She was loved," Joon-won continued. "And hated. And misunderstood. But she was never invisible."
"She's dead," Ji-hoon replied. Calm. Final. Like a stone dropping in a lake. "Let her stay that way."
Silence again.
Joon-won sat down slowly in the armchair near the window. "You know, when she watched you play back then—before you knew—it was like she was seeing something she'd buried a long time ago come back to life."
"I'm not her resurrection."
"No," Joon-won said softly. "You're her unfinished song."
Ji-hoon's fingers twitched.
The melody came slowly, building from the base of his spine. A haunting minor key, unsure of its direction, but brave enough to rise.
He played.
Notes bled out like confessions, like broken memories, like a voice that trembled at the edge of love and rage.
He played until the warmth of the room made his breath return.
Until the heater's hum became background noise to a song not written for grief, but despite it.
Joon-won sat silently, knowing better than to interrupt. Because what Ji-hoon played wasn't for him. It wasn't for Ara either.
It was for the silence that came after someone you loved died twice—once in life, and again in memory.
When the last note fell like snow onto the keys, Ji-hoon leaned back.
The room was warm now.
But he still felt cold.
"I'm not going to play for them," he said. "Not for the Philharmonic. Not for the cameras. Not yet."
Joon-won nodded. "Okay."
Ji-hoon stood, walking slowly to the window. He could hear the city out there. Moving. Breathing. Unaware of the ache pulsing behind his ribs.
"I'll play again when the cold leaves me," he murmured.
"And if it doesn't?" Joon-won asked.
Ji-hoon turned toward the piano, placing one hand over the keys, almost tender.
"Then maybe I'll learn how to make fire from something else."
He didn't know what that meant yet.
But maybe the music did.
Ji-hoon barely had time to catch his breath before everything shifted.
The silence was ruptured not by music but by the sharp slam of a door downstairs. It wasn't Joon-won. This sound was heavier, deliberate—a footstep that didn't belong. The air in the room seemed to tighten. Ji-hoon straightened, tilting his head slightly, his ears narrowing down on each faint echo, the shift of weight, the tread of boots on old floorboards.
He didn't speak. He didn't move. He listened.
Three distinct steps. A pause. A creak of wood to the left. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to be completely silent—but they weren't being loud either. That meant intent. That meant someone who thought they had the right to be here or wanted him to think so.
Ji-hoon reached slowly into the drawer near the piano bench and withdrew a compact stun baton—the one Joon-won had insisted he keep, though Ji-hoon had never needed to use it until now.
He rose.
The footsteps drew closer. He recognized the subtle scrape of gloves against the stair rail. Not a thief. A professional. Ji-hoon moved to the wall, back flat against the plaster, the baton tight in his grip.
The door creaked open slowly, without warning.
A man stepped in. Heavy coat. Leather boots. The smell of gun oil and smoke trailed him in, just faint enough to make Ji-hoon's throat tighten.
"You play well, even when you think no one's watching," the stranger said casually.
Ji-hoon didn't reply.
The man continued, stepping further into the room. "I always wondered what would happen if the son found out. If he started digging too deep. Guess I have my answer now."
Ji-hoon lunged.
The baton struck hard against the man's side. He grunted and staggered, but recovered faster than Ji-hoon expected. The blind pianist twisted, ducking instinctively as the man retaliated with a swing. Ji-hoon couldn't see the punch, but he felt the wind from it, dodging back just in time.
"You're quick," the man said, amused. "Blind doesn't mean weak. Noted."
Ji-hoon spun, jabbing the baton forward again, this time catching the man in the ribs. A crackle of electricity lit the air—the stun pulse activated. The man growled in pain but didn't fall.
Too prepared. Armored. Ji-hoon knew now that this man was one of them. A fixer. A cleaner. Someone sent to erase.
"You should've stayed in the dark," the man muttered, drawing a switchblade with a clean, metallic snap.
Ji-hoon listened. Every breath. Every footstep. His mind mapped the room as he moved—five steps to the window, three to the heater, two to the stool. He threw the stool toward the sound of the knife.
It hit.
The man cursed and stumbled. Ji-hoon took the moment to bolt past him, rushing down the stairs, heart pounding.
He needed a plan.
His cane was near the door—he grabbed it on instinct, not for sight but for balance. His mind spun through the layout of the building. The back exit led to the alley. If he could make it there—
A crash from above.
Ji-hoon ran.
The alley was slick with snow and ice, but he didn't stop. His hands reached out, guiding him along the familiar brick wall. He ducked behind a dumpster just as the man came bursting out of the back door, breathing heavily, cursing under his breath.
"Ji-hoon!" the man barked. "You think you can hide? This isn't over!"
No. It wasn't.
Ji-hoon gritted his teeth, his breath steaming in the cold. The man wasn't alone. There would be more. The warning was clear: stop digging or they'd start cleaning.
Too late.
Ji-hoon wasn't going to stop. Not now. Not after everything he'd uncovered. His hands were shaking, not from fear but fury. His mother's death wasn't just a tragedy. It was a message. And they were still sending them.
He pulled out his phone with a trembling hand and called the only number he trusted.
Joon-won answered on the first ring. "Ji-hoon? What—"
"They came," Ji-hoon said, voice low and controlled. "One of them. Tried to kill me."
A pause. Then Joon-won swore violently.
"Where are you?"
"Behind the building. Alley. I need extraction. Now."
"On my way. Stay hidden. Don't move."
Ji-hoon ended the call.
He sat in the cold, heart still thudding, mind racing. He wasn't a soldier. He wasn't trained for this. But music had taught him something more dangerous than violence: precision.
And now, he would use that precision to dismantle the truth—one lie at a time.
The warmth of the piano room was gone. Replaced by a fire inside him that wouldn't go out.
He'd play again.
But next time, it would be a warning. And they would hear it whether they wanted to or not.
Ji-hoon's knuckles burned from the contact, raw from striking the wall just moments before. The cold in the room wrapped around him like a second skin, and yet the only thing that grounded him was the warmth beneath his fingers—the piano. The keys, chipped at the edges and slightly uneven from age, still sang like they remembered everything.
But he didn't play.
Not yet.
Because outside this room, death had a new scent. And it smelled like cigarette ash, broken promises, and gunmetal oil.
"Team B. Sweep the east corridor," came a voice in his earpiece. "Room 6 is clear. Moving up the stairs."
Ji-hoon didn't reply. He didn't need to. His orders had been made clear before they left the safe house that morning. This was no longer an investigation. This was a hunt. Each breath he took was heavier now, not with grief—but with vengeance. Every movement he made was slower, more deliberate. The type of calm that only comes when everything inside is chaos.
He moved a hand across the piano's body, tracing the worn lines of the instrument as if they could tell him what had happened in this room. The intel had brought them here—a derelict performance school turned underground safehouse. The kind of place forgotten by time, useful only to those who knew how to disappear.
According to the files Hye-jin decrypted, this was where Si-wan's people once held Ji-hoon's mother for questioning—long before her death. Long before the scent of cologne marked Ji-hoon's memories like a blade.
Gunshots cracked through the hallway.
Three sharp bursts. Then silence.
He tilted his head. No screams. No footsteps. That meant his guards had succeeded. No civilians were supposed to be in the building, so whoever they encountered had already failed at hiding.
Static flickered in his earpiece, then Joon-won's voice. "Three down. Two unaccounted for. They're moving fast."
Ji-hoon adjusted his gloves. The heat in his chest was rising, but his fingers remained steady. That cold, calculated steadiness he had taught himself at thirteen, after his vision failed and the only thing he could trust was the sound of his breath.
Then he heard it.
A whisper—not real, but vivid enough to be real.
"Don't trust the ones who smile, Ji-hoon…"
His mother's voice. Not in memory. Not in hallucination.
But layered, woven into the air like it had never left.
He didn't move. Didn't blink. Just breathed.
Footsteps.
Real ones this time—approaching quickly. Then a gasp.
"You shouldn't be here."
Female voice. Close. Early twenties. Wavering, uncertain.
Ji-hoon turned toward the sound.
"I'm always where I shouldn't be," he said softly. "Who are you?"
A tremble in her breath. "No one you need to remember."
Wrong answer.
He clicked his tongue once, sharp and purposeful. It echoed faintly. Enough to map the space.
Four meters ahead. Five-foot-three. No weapon drawn.
He stepped forward.
The girl panicked, took two steps back, stumbled on something—probably a loose floorboard or debris from the collapsed beams above.
"Wait—! I didn't know who she was back then," she said suddenly. "I was just told to record the interrogation. That's it. I never laid a hand on her!"
Ji-hoon stopped. That was new.
"Back then?" he asked. "You were there?"
Silence again. Then: "She sang. Before they gagged her. She—God—she sang. I've never heard a voice like that…"
Ji-hoon's breath hitched. The silence between them stretched like a taut string. His mother had sung under duress?
"Why?"
"They asked her about a man named Baek Chan-gyu," the girl said, voice shaking. "Said he had ties to the Conservatory. Said she knew more than she was letting on. But all she did was sing. Like she knew it'd be the last time her voice meant something."
Ji-hoon stepped forward, closer. His shadow merged with hers.
"Did you help them?" he asked.
The girl didn't respond.
Ji-hoon listened to the tremor in her breath, the weight in her silence. Then he tilted his head.
"You ran the audio feed," he concluded. "You looped a silence tape over the monitors so the guards didn't hear what she actually said."
She didn't answer.
But that silence—that was confirmation.
Ji-hoon exhaled slowly. "Leave this building. If I hear your voice again, you won't."
He turned, walking back to the piano. His hands settled on the keys. Not to play—but to remember.
Later, when the team reconvened in the eastern wing, Joon-won brought a flash drive.
"We found it in a box of old wiring. She said it was all trash. I didn't believe her."
Ji-hoon took the flash. His fingers recognized the etching on its surface—a small scratch shaped like a crescent. His mother's code.
They played it back in the van, Joon-won watching the screen, Ji-hoon listening.
Static. Silence. Then…
Music.
Her music.
A soft lullaby. Woven with grief, restraint, and some kind of coded message in vibrato and phrasing. It wasn't for ears. It was for memory. For Ji-hoon.
"She knew she wouldn't make it out," Joon-won whispered. "This is her way of talking to you."
Ji-hoon gripped the seat. His nails dug into the leather.
"She left a piece of herself behind," he said.
"No," Joon-won said. "She left a warning. Listen to the bridge."
Ji-hoon did.
And then, buried beneath the melody, distorted and filtered, was a name.
Chan-gyu.
Followed by something else. A number. A location.
Ji-hoon's pulse raced. "She wasn't just tortured. She was tracking them. She knew who was funding Si-wan. She knew everything."
Joon-won stared at the screen. "Room 18. Cold storage sector. Under the Conservatory."
A Cold Room.
A Warm Piano.
Ji-hoon tilted his head back, eyes closed behind his blindfold. He was shaking.
Not from fear.
From the weight of what came next.
The door was open now. She had left it for him. Not to grieve through—but to walk through and end what she couldn't.
He would finish the performance.
And his encore?
It would be made of fire, blood, and truth.