Back in the city, the silence inside the Jung household was deafening. So-min sat on the edge of her bed, her phone resting face-down on the mattress. The encrypted chat had gone completely cold after Da-eun’s last message about losing signal, leaving So-min feeling entirely stranded.

Restless and tight with anxiety, she couldn't just sit still while her friends were being driven into the middle of nowhere. If Do-hyun was going to lock her in, she was going to use the time to dig into the past he was so desperate to hide.

She walked over to her closet, pulling out a dusty, forgotten plastic storage bin from the very back of the top shelf. Inside lay old school projects, childhood drawings, and at the very bottom, a thick, velvet-bound photo album.

So-min carried it to her desk and flipped it open.

The pages were filled with bright, sunlit memories from when they were just six years old. Her eyes scanned the old glossy prints, tracing the familiar faces before the walls had been built between them.

There was a photo from a joint birthday party. A tiny Rora was covered in frosting, laughing hysterically, while Da-eun stood right next to her, proudly wearing a paper crown. In the background of the same photo, a younger Do-hyun was grinning, holding a tennis racket twice his size, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Min-jun Kim and Woo-jin Park.

They looked happy. Completely unburdened.

But as So-min turned the page, her eyes caught on a specific group photo taken at the Park family estate’s grand garden. The four older siblings—In-ah, Do-hyun, Min-jun, and Woo-jin—were standing in a row, looking straight at the camera.

So-min’s breath hitched.

Even back then, when they were supposedly just a tight-knit circle of friends, there was a strange detail she had never noticed as a kid. In the reflection of the glass patio door behind them, a completely different figure was visible, standing in the shadows of the house, watching the group. The reflection was slightly blurry, but it was clear that someone else had always been hovering on the periphery of their lives.

Suddenly, her bedroom door handle rattled. So-min quickly slammed the album shut, sliding it under a pile of notebooks just as Do-hyun walked in.

So-min quickly opened the album to a different page, keeping her eyes fixed on the photos of just the three of them—herself, Da-eun, and Rora—taken during a summer trip when they were six years old.

Do-hyun glanced at the open page, his expression softening slightly before the tense, guarded look returned to his face. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed.

"Lunch is on the table," he said quietly, his voice lacking its usual warmth. "Eat up, and make sure the front windows stay locked."

"Are you going somewhere?" So-min asked, keeping her tone as neutral as possible.

"I have some things to take care of," Do-hyun replied vaguely. "Just stay inside. I mean it, So-min."

Without waiting for her to answer, he turned and walked down the hallway, the heavy sound of his boots echoing through the quiet house until the front door finally clicked shut.

The moment she heard his car pull out of the driveway, So-min turned back to the photo album. She looked at the tiny, smiling faces of herself, Da-eun, and Rora. They had been inseparable since they were toddlers, sharing secrets and making promises to always look out for one another.

A fierce wave of determination replaced her anxiety. Her best friends were out there in the countryside, completely cut off and relying on the manual map they were sketching. She couldn't just sit in her room doing nothing.

So-min pulled out her phone, opened their childhood cipher keyboard, and began drafting a long sequence of encrypted messages, hoping that the moment Da-eun and Rora managed to crack the Wi-Fi password, her findings would be waiting for them.

Meanwhile, back at the isolated cabin, night was beginning to fall. The forest around the house grew dark, and the low hum of the crickets filled the air. In-ah had locked herself in the master bedroom with the router, and the house was dead silent.