Lyn: The Silent Director

  When Lyn moved to New York with her parents, she entered a world vastly different from the one she had known in Gwangju. The towering skyscrapers, the endless sea of people, and the unfamiliar accents—it all felt suffocating. New York City was nothing like Gwangju. It was loud, bustling, and filled with people from all walks of life. When Lyn first arrived as a child, she barely spoke. The trauma she carried from that summer in Gwangju weighed heavily on her young shoulders. She was quiet, withdrawn, and often thrown into fits of tantrums when something triggered her fear. The river, the dark, the sound of something spshing in the water—things she couldn’t expin made her tremble. Her parents enrolled her in an elite private school, but making friends was impossible. She was the quiet girl, the one who never joined conversations, the one who kept her head down and her words locked away.

  Her parents, worried about her social withdrawal, hired babysitters to care for her. None sted long. Lyn was prone to tantrums—outbursts of frustration that came without expnation. She’d throw things, scream into pillows, or lock herself in her room for hours. Her parents assumed she was simply adjusting to the move, but deep down, Lyn knew it was something more. There was something in her past that she couldn’t remember, something that cwed at her mind in the quiet of the night.

  Her parents, high-profile business figures, never quite understood these reactions, chalking them up to childish fears. But Andrew did. Andrew had been her first and only true friend in New York. Unlike the men who pursued her, Andrew wasn’t interested in romance—he had his own interests elsewhere. He was the only one who noticed the way her hands clenched when the lights dimmed at a club or how she subtly avoided walking by the Hudson River at night. He never pried, never asked questions she wasn’t ready to answer. Instead, he distracted her, kept her entertained, and always pulled her away from her thoughts when she needed it most.

  As she grew, Lyn transformed. The once quiet girl became a woman who commanded attention. She spoke with poise, walked with confidence, and held herself like someone who was untouchable. In the business world, she was a force to be reckoned with. No one knew of the silent fears that still clung to her at night, the panic attacks she suppressed when she found herself in dark enclosed spaces.

  As she grew older, she buried herself in her studies. She was brilliant, excelling in business courses, following in her father’s footsteps. By the time she was twenty-four, she had taken over as director of their family’s prestigious trading company.

  She was successful. She was powerful.

  Despite her success, Lyn never truly opened herself to love. She went on blind dates, entertained flirtations, but commitment? That was something she never allowed. She had built walls too high for anyone to climb—except Andrew, who had long stopped trying, content in simply being by her side.

  No one knew what she was missing, not even her. But a part of her longed for something—a piece of her past she couldn’t remember, yet felt deeply connected to.

  Then came the call.

  Lyn sat in her high-rise apartment in New York, sipping a gss of wine after a long day at work. The skyline shimmered in the distance, but her mind was elsewhere. Her phone buzzed, the number unfamiliar but the country code was South Korean. Curiosity piqued, she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Choi,” a deep voice spoke. “This is Chief Inspector Kang from the Gwangju Police Department.”

  Lyn’s fingers tightened around her gss. “Gwangju?” She hadn't heard that name in years.

  “I understand this is unexpected,” the officer continued, “but we’re reaching out regarding a recent case that might interest you. I believe you are familiar with a past incident that occurred twenty years ago.”

  Lyn’s heart pounded. She barely spoke of the past, let alone thought of it. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A family was murdered recently, in a manner strikingly simir to an old case,” Kang expined. “We are not asking for your direct involvement, but given your family's connection, you may want to look into it.”

  “My family?” Lyn’s voice was sharp now. “What does my family have to do with this?”

  There was silence on the line. “Perhaps you should see for yourself.”

  The call ended, leaving Lyn cold. She set down her gss and turned on her ptop. Fingers trembling, she searched for news from Gwangju. Headlines flooded the screen:

  “Brutal Family Murder in Gwangju – Child Survives but Unable to Speak.”

  A chill ran down her spine. She clicked an archived article from twenty years ago:

  “Kang Group Denies Allegations of Involvement in Local Scandal.”

  “Kang Group Dismisses Accusations Amid Growing Controversy.”

  “Corporate Giant Kang Group Refutes Cims of Wrongdoing in Ongoing Investigation.”

  Her family’s company name gred at her from the screen. What was her father involved in? Why was their name tied to this case? Her breath quickened, and she suddenly felt trapped in the apartment’s dim lighting.

  A knock on the door made her jump. “Lyn? You okay?” It was Andrew.

  She hesitated before opening it. Andrew took one look at her and frowned. “What happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Lyn let out a shaky breath. “I think I have.” She motioned him in and showed him the articles. “It’s happening again, Andrew.”

  He read the headlines, then met her gaze. “Lyn… do you have to go back?”

  “I have to,” she whispered. “I need to know what happened.”

  Andrew sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know I’d come with you if I could.”

  She forced a small smile. “I know. But this is something I have to face alone.”

  Aky: The Boy Who Forgot

  When Aky’s family moved to Seongnam, he changed. Once the energetic, talkative child, he became quiet, distant. School felt dull, and making friends no longer interested him. Every night, he’d stare at the ceiling, thinking of Yna, wondering if she was okay in the orphanage. He had wanted to go back for her, but his parents had moved too fast. By the time he adjusted to their new life, she was gone. Aky had always been mischievous, but the years had turned that pyful boy into a man who carried himself with effortless charm. He was the kind of person who made heads turn, who could fsh a smirk and have anyone—man or woman—wrapped around his finger. But despite the attention, despite the fleeting romances, there was always something distant about him.

  He had forgotten much of his childhood in Gwangju. At least, that was what he told himself. At first, he had retreated into himself, refusing to interact, refusing to make new friends. But time had a way of healing—or at least, covering up—wounds. But life moved forward. Slowly, Aky returned to his old self. He became popur again, excelling in school, participating in sports, and ter, enrolling in medical school to study neuroscience. He forgot the sadness, the loneliness. Except for one thing. His first love. He had no name for her, no clear memory of her face. Just a warmth, a presence from his childhood that had meant everything to him. It haunted him in ways he couldn’t expin, like a song he couldn’t quite remember.

  Then he met Yuri. Yuri was the only one who saw through him.

  She had pursued him relentlessly in medical school, never deterred by his cold responses or his attempts to keep things casual. She knew from the start that there was something weighing him down, something that made him resist attachment. And yet, she never gave up. She made the first move, pulled him out of his shell, and before he knew it, he had fallen for her. Aky was popur in medical school. Women were drawn to his confidence, his charm, his intelligence. But none of them ever stayed. He never let them.

  Yuri was different. She was persistent, unfazed by his coldness. From the moment she met Aky, she had decided he was going to be hers. It started with casual conversations, then study sessions. She confessed to him twice, and twice he had gently rejected her. But she didn’t give up.

  One day, during a te-night shift in the hospital, she grabbed his wrist and looked straight into his eyes. “You can keep running, but I’m not going anywhere.” And somehow, Aky found himself falling for her. They started dating, on and off. Yuri was fiery, passionate, and headstrong—everything Aky needed but never realized. Yet, no matter how many times she made him smile, how many times she held his hand, there was always something in his heart he couldn’t give her.

  His past.

  She knew he had a childhood love, a girl he never spoke about. It made her jealous, but she reassured herself with one thing: that girl no longer existed in Aky’s life. She was just a memory. But even with Yuri, Aky had walls he didn’t know how to tear down. He would wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, haunted by nightmares he couldn’t expin. And he would pretend it was nothing. He always did. Yuri saw through the act. She was the only one who knew the truth—that Aky wasn’t as strong as he made himself seem. That he carried something deep inside him, something he refused to acknowledge. Still, their retionship was a mess of push and pull. She broke up with him more times than he could count, yet she always came back. And he always took her back. Because despite everything, she was the only one who truly saw him. But even she didn’t know the whole story.

  Then came the call.

  Aky was in the middle of reviewing a case file when his phone rang. The office was quiet, the only sound the occasional rustling of papers and the distant murmur of voices from the hallway. Without gncing at the caller ID, he picked up.

  “Dr. Park speaking.”

  A brief pause. Then a deep, unfamiliar voice came through the receiver.

  “Dr. Park, this is Chief Inspector Kang.”

  Aky frowned slightly, the name unfamiliar. “Chief Inspector… Kang?”

  “Yes.” There was a moment of hesitation, as if the man on the other end was debating how much to say. “I don’t believe we’ve spoken before, but I’ve heard about you. You used to work on cases with Chief Kim, correct?”

  At the mention of Chief Kim, something flickered in Aky’s memory. He had worked with the man years ago—back when he had still been entangled in police investigations before choosing the path of forensic psychiatry instead.

  “Yeah,” Aky replied, his tone cautious. “I worked with Chief Kim on a few cases. Is this about him?”

  “No,” Kang said, his voice taking on a more serious edge. “This is about something else. A case in Gwangju.”

  Aky leaned back in his chair, already feeling a strange weight settling over him. “Gwangju?”

  “There was another murder,” Kang said grimly. “A family. But it’s the child that concerns us.”

  Aky felt a strange pressure in his chest. “Why?”

  The chief hesitated before finally saying, “The child was found unresponsive. Unable to speak.”

  Aky’s grip on the phone tightened. His pulse quickened.

  Mute.

  The word alone was enough to send a sharp, unwelcome jolt through him. Aky pressed his fingers to his temple, grounding himself before he spoke. “And why are you telling me this?”

  “I thought you should know,” Kang said. “Given your history with simir cases.”

  “My history,” Aky repeated, his voice quiet.

  Kang wasn’t saying it outright, but Aky knew. Because twenty years ago, he had been that child.

  Silent. Frozen. Lost in trauma so deep that it had taken years to cw his way out.

  And now it was happening again.

  “Where in Gwangju?” Aky asked, his voice sharper than before.

  “I can send you the details, but—”

  “I’ll go,” Aky interrupted.

  “Dr.Park—”

  “I need to see it for myself.”

  It wasn’t a decision—it was instinct. Something was pulling him back to Gwangju. Back to the pce he had spent years trying to forget.

  And he wasn’t sure he was ready for what he might remember.

  Aky’s mind buzzed with unspoken questions, but the line went dead before he could ask anything further. He lowered the phone slowly, his eyes unfocused.

  The past.

  It was something he had trained himself to forget. But now, it was cwing its way back. Almost instinctively, he pulled up the test news reports on his ptop. A fresh crime scene photo loaded on the screen—a cordoned-off alley, blood smeared across the pavement, and in the foreground, a small boy wrapped in a bnket, eyes vacant, unable to speak. His breath hitched. He saw himself in that boy. His hand hovered over the mouse as he scrolled through the details. More headlines followed: “Chilling Echo of a 20-Year-Old Tragedy: Another Family Brutally Murdered in Gwangju.” “Young Survivor Found Speechless After Gruesome Homicide.” “Authorities Investigate Possible Link Between Past and Present Killings.”

  His heart pounded in his chest. He barely registered the sound of Yuri entering the room. “You look pale,” she noted, setting down her coffee. “What’s wrong?”

  Aky hesitated before answering. “Nothing serious. A case back home.”

  “Back home?” Yuri crossed her arms, scrutinizing him.

  “Gwangju,” he said quietly. “But it doesn’t concern me. It’s just… an old case.”

  Yuri narrowed her eyes. “Then why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

  Aky sighed, rubbing his temples. “I just need to check something.”

  Yuri watched as he clicked on another news article, fingers tapping anxiously against the keyboard. He skimmed through the details, his mind racing. The crime scene was eerily simir. The positioning of the bodies, the way they had been silenced, the single surviving witness too traumatized to speak.

  Deja vu. Yuri sat beside him, reading over his shoulder. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  Aky met her gaze. He had no intention of going back—until now. “Yeah… I think I am.”

  She bit her lip, choosing her words carefully. “Do you need me to come with you?”

  For a moment, Aky considered it. Having her there would be comforting. But he shook his head. “No. This is something I need to figure out on my own.”

  Yuri frowned but nodded, pcing a hand over his. “Just promise me one thing. Don’t shut me out when you get there.”

  Aky exhaled slowly. “I promise.”

  Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure if he could keep that promise. The past had a way of dragging him under, and this time, it was coming for him whether he was ready or not.

  Yna: The Scar of Forgotten Pain

  Yna’s life had been a series of losses. First, her parents. Then, her grandmother. Then, her memories. She was ten when she was pced in an orphanage. She had no recollection of anything before that—only that she had once been taken care of by an old woman. She had no memory of friends, of a home, of anything that came before the orphanage. She rarely spoke at first. Her adoptive parents, a kind elderly couple, had struggled to get through to her. They moved to Australia, where Yna grew up. She didn’t speak for almost a year. She had nightmares she never expined. She would wake up screaming, clutching at her arm, where a scar ran from her wrist to her elbow. Her adoptive parents took her to therapy, to psychiatrists. Slowly, she healed. Slowly, she forgot. By the time she turned twenty, she was thriving. She studied literature and art, and eventually became a beloved children’s book author and cartoonist. But every year, at the end of summer, the scar on her arm would ache. But even as she built a life for herself, something always lingered at the edges of her mind—something missing, something she couldn’t grasp. It was a dull pain, but it always came back.

  Her nightmares had stopped after years of therapy, after years of forcing herself to forget. But one thing remained—a scar on her arm. A scar she didn’t remember getting, but one that ached at the end of every summer. She never spoke of it to anyone. Not even Minho. Minho had been the one who showed her that love was real, that she was deserving of it. They were both orphans, both survivors of something they didn’t fully understand. He never pried about her past, just as she never pried about his. They had each other, and that was enough.

  But Minho wasn’t blind. Minho had noticed Yna’s scar before. It was faint, almost unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. One night, as she y asleep beside him, he traced his fingers over it gently.

  Yna stirred. “What are you doing?” she murmured sleepily.

  “Just wondering,” he whispered. “Where did you get this?”

  Yna frowned, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know. I’ve had it since I was little.”

  Minho’s detective instincts fred. Scars like that didn’t just appear. “Does it hurt?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “Especially in te summer.”

  Something about that unsettled him. “Do you remember anything about it?”

  Yna shook her head. “No. Just that it’s always been there.”

  She rolled over and fell asleep again, but Minho y awake, staring at the ceiling. Something about that scar—it felt like a puzzle piece, a clue to something bigger. Minho wasn’t convinced. The detective in him couldn’t let it go. He had seen the way she winced when her scar ached, the way she always dismissed questions about it. And he was starting to wonder—was this connected to the case? To the past she didn’t remember?

  Yna had always been good at pushing things to the back of her mind. The past was a blurry, unfinished painting—colors blending together without clear lines, missing pieces she had never bothered to find. And yet, the nightmares never truly left her. Some nights, she woke up with the sensation of something cold pressing against her skin. Sometimes, she felt an inexplicable ache in her arm where the scar remained. It was distant—like an echo of pain she didn’t fully understand.

  She told herself it didn’t matter. She had a life now, a good one. A career she loved, a man she loved. Why would she go digging into things that were best left buried?

  That evening was another quiet one, or at least, it was supposed to be. Yna sat curled up on the couch, a book resting on her p, its spine creased from where she had absentmindedly pressed her thumb over it again and again. The soft glow of the reading mp cast warm light across the room, flickering slightly as a breeze from the open window rustled the curtains. Outside, the city hummed with life—distant car horns, the muffled chatter of pedestrians, the occasional sound of footsteps in the hallway outside their apartment.

  Yet, inside their home, the silence was heavier than usual.

  Minho was there, but he wasn’t.

  He sat at the small dining table, fingers tapping lightly against the rim of his coffee cup, untouched for the past half hour. His posture was unusually rigid, his jaw clenched just enough for Yna to notice. He was thinking—no, debating something in his head.

  Yna watched him from the corner of her eye, pretending to read as she waited for him to speak. He had been like this all evening, fidgety and restless, his shoulders tensing every time she shifted. It wasn’t like him at all.

  Finally, she sighed and set the book aside.

  “Minho,” she called, her voice gentle but firm.

  He gnced up, startled, as if she had pulled him out of a deep trance.

  “You've been sitting there for the past thirty minutes, looking like you're about to fight a war. What is it?”

  Minho opened his mouth, hesitated, then sighed. He pushed his coffee away and leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table. For a moment, he just studied her, his gaze searching—as if he was trying to memorize her face before saying something that could never be taken back.

  “There’s been a case,” he started, his voice steady, but Yna caught the slight tension in his jaw. He was being careful—too careful.

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. “And?”

  Minho exhaled slowly. “It’s in Gwangju.”

  The name alone sent a jolt through her.

  The air in the room suddenly felt too still, too sharp. Gwangju. The city she had spent years trying to forget.

  She sat up a little straighter, her fingers curling against the fabric of her sweatpants. “Okay,” she said cautiously. “What about it?”

  Minho hesitated, then reached into his bag, pulling out a thin file. He didn’t open it, just pced it on the table between them like it carried something dangerous. His fingers lingered on the edge.

  “It’s… simir to one from twenty years ago.”

  Yna felt her heartbeat slow, then quicken again, an odd rhythm of panic and uncertainty. A strange pressure built behind her skull. She swallowed, staring at the file, but made no move to touch it.

  “And what does that have to do with me?” she asked, her voice quieter now.

  Minho didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached for her hand, his touch firm yet gentle, his thumb tracing small circles on her skin. It was something he always did when she was anxious, a silent reassurance. But right now, it only made her more nervous. His grip tightened slightly before he spoke again.

  “You were involved in that case, Yna.”

  Her breath hitched.

  The words rang in her ears, hollow and distant, as if they didn’t belong to this moment, to this version of herself. A cold weight settled in her stomach.

  “What?”

  Minho sighed, squeezing her hand lightly. “Your name came up in the records. The details are missing, but you were there. Somehow.”

  The ache behind her skull sharpened.

  Disjointed images flickered in her mind—shadows stretching across dimly lit streets, the echo of hurried footsteps, the distant sound of water pping against the shore. She pressed her free hand to her forehead, willing the memories to come, but they danced just out of reach, dissolving before she could grasp them.

  “I—I don’t remember,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Minho’s gaze softened, but there was something else in his eyes. Guilt.

  There was more. She could feel it.

  “Minho,” she said slowly. “Why are you telling me this?”

  He hesitated. Just for a second. Just long enough for her to catch it.

  Then he took a deep breath and let go of her hand.

  “Because the family that was murdered twenty years ago…” He swallowed. “Was mine.”

  Yna felt the air rush out of her lungs.

  The words nded like a physical blow, sending her world tilting sideways. She stared at him, unblinking, trying to process what he had just said.

  No. That didn’t make sense.

  Minho—her Minho—the man who held her close on cold nights, who kissed her forehead when he thought she was asleep—he had lived through that horror?

  And she had been there?

  Her chest tightened. The apartment, once warm and familiar, suddenly felt suffocating.

  “I need to go,” she whispered, the words slipping out before she even processed them.

  Minho reached for her again, his grip firmer this time. “Are you sure?”

  No, she wasn’t.

  But if she had been part of Minho’s past—if his pain was tied to hers—then she owed it to him, to herself, to find the truth.

  Even if it shattered everything she thought she knew.

  “I have to.”

  Minho exhaled through his nose, jaw tightening before he stood up. He walked around the table and crouched in front of her, gently taking her hands in his. His warmth grounded her, but his eyes—there was something raw in them. A quiet, determined promise.

  “I’ll be with you the whole time, Yna,” he said, his voice unwavering. “I won’t let you get hurt. Not from this. Not from the past.”

  Yna searched his face, and for the first time that evening, she let herself believe him.

  Because when Minho made a promise, he never broke it.

  The Reunion

  It was a call none of them had expected. A call that would bring them back to the pce they had all left behind.

  Gwangju.

  Three lives, each built on forgotten memories, were about to collide once again. And this time, there was no escaping the truth.

  Because the past never truly disappears. And the missing pieces were about to resurface.

  Lyn, Aky, and Yna were not required to return to Gwangju, yet fate had its own way of pulling them back.

  Lyn

  It started with a conversation she wasn’t supposed to overhear. A quiet murmur in her father’s office, an unusual tension in his tone. Lyn had learned long ago that in the Choi family, nothing ever happened without a reason. Every decision was calcuted, every move deliberate.

  At first, she dismissed it as another business scandal—something that would soon be buried under yers of well-crafted statements and power pys. But when she caught sight of a familiar name in the news, her breath stilled.

  A case from twenty years ago. A murder. And her family’s company entangled in it.

  That night, she sat alone in her study, the glow of her ptop illuminating the unease on her face. She scrolled through old articles, her fingers hovering over the screen as if touching the past itself.

  She hadn’t wanted to return. She had spent her life moving forward, proving she was more than the name she carried. But now, there was something gnawing at her—an unease she couldn't shake. If her family had been involved, what else had they hidden from her?

  The answer y in Gwangju.

  And whether she wanted to or not, she needed to know.

  Aky

  For Aky, the past was something he had forced himself to forget. Or perhaps, something his mind had locked away for him.

  He had built a new life—one where he thrived in the chaos of his school, in the noise of his friends, in the comfort of a reality that didn’t demand him to look back.

  But the moment he saw the news, all of that shattered.

  A boy. Found alone. Mute and unresponsive.

  Aky felt his entire body freeze, his mind unraveling like a tape being rewound too fast. The image struck something deep inside him—a pce he had never dared to revisit.

  He had been that boy once.

  He didn’t remember much from that time, only fragments of a life before his current one. But he did remember silence. The way fear had stripped him of words. The way the world had seemed too big, too loud, while he remained trapped in the stillness of his own mind. His hands trembled as he closed his phone. He didn’t have a pn. He didn’t know what he was hoping to find.

  But the next thing he knew, he was in his car, heading toward the city he had spent years running from.

  Yna

  She had spent the past few nights unable to sleep.

  Every time she closed her eyes, her mind raced—pieces of a puzzle falling into pce faster than she could process them. She had been involved in that case.

  She didn’t remember how or why, but the evidence was there.

  And worst of all, it wasn’t just any case. It was Minho’s case. His family. His loss.

  The realization had gutted her.

  Minho had spent years searching for answers, for justice. And all this time, she had been unknowingly carrying a part of that past inside her.

  She needed to do something.

  Not just for Minho, but for herself. For the parts of her that had been buried in Gwangju, for the questions that had remained unanswered.

  For the childhood friends she had never expected to reunite with.

  So when the time came, when the past finally caught up with them, none of them had a choice but to follow where it led.

  Back to Gwangju.

  Back to the beginning.

  END OF CHAPTER 5