Inside the cabin, the darkness of the countryside felt absolute. Unlike the city, where streetlights and traffic hummed through the windows, the forest outside was a wall of black silence, broken only by the sharp, rhythmic scraping of tree branches against the wooden siding.

Da-eun sat on the edge of the squeaky twin bed in the guest room, her phone’s screen turned down to the lowest brightness setting. Beside her, Rora was staring intently at the bottom of the bedroom door, watching the faint line of light from the hallway.

A floorboard creaked in the distance, followed by the heavy thud of In-ah’s bedroom door shutting tightly. A moment later, the hallway light clicked off, plunging the entire house into shadows.

"She's down for the night," Rora whispered, her breath hitching. "But she took the key to the master bedroom with her. We can't just walk in."

"We don't need to get all the way inside," Da-eun whispered back, pulling her backpack onto her lap and extracting the manual map they had drawn earlier. "The old phone lines in these cabins usually run from the exterior box straight through the hallway wall. If the router is plugged into the main jack, the wires pass right through the linen closet next to her room."

Rora’s eyes widened in realization. "The access panel."

Slipping off their sneakers, the two sisters crept out into the narrow hallway in their socks. The wooden floors were freezing, and every step felt like a gamble against a loud creak. They reached the slatted wooden doors of the linen closet, pulling them open with agonizing slowness to prevent the rusted tracks from rattling.

Behind a stack of faded, musty blankets was a small plastic square set into the drywall—the internal wiring panel for the cabin's communications.

Da-eun held her phone up, using the screen's pale glow to illuminate the tangle of gray and blue cables. Nestled right at the bottom of the splitter box was a small, blinking black brick: the auxiliary power supply for the house's internet line.

"If we can't hit the physical reset button on the router itself," Da-eun murmured, pointing to the power jack, "we can kill the power to it from here. When it reboots, it forces a temporary broadcast window for setup."

"Do it," Rora urged, keeping her eyes fixed on In-ah's door just three feet away.

Da-eun reached into the panel, her fingers finding the thin black power cord. With a quick, silent tug, she disconnected it. The faint green indicator light inside the wall died instantly.

They waited in the pitch black, counting thirty agonizing seconds in their heads.

One. Two. Three...

Da-eun shoved the cable back into the port. The green light flared back to life, steady and solid.

Instantly, both of their phones vibrated in their pockets. A single bar of Wi-Fi appeared at the top of their screens—an open, unencrypted setup network broadcasting straight from the rebooting router.

Da-eun’s fingers flew across the keyboard, opening the trio chat before the automated system could lock them out again. A massive flood of delayed messages from So-min immediately started pouring down the screen.

But it wasn't just text. So-min had attached a file—a scanned image from the childhood photo album.

Da-eun rapidly tapped the screen, accepting the incoming file from So-min just as the open setup network began to stabilize.

"We have to move, now," Rora breathed, her eyes darting toward In-ah's door as a low rustle came from inside the room.

They scrambled back down the hallway on tiptoe, slipping into their bedroom and pulling the door shut until it clicked softly. Da-eun dove onto the mattress, keeping her phone shielded beneath the blanket to hide the bright glow. Rora huddled right beside her, watching the Wi-Fi signal indicator hold steady at two bars.

Instead of typing out a long, tedious string of code, Da-eun opened their secure communication app and initiated an internet-based voice call. Because they had no cellular service, the Wi-Fi calling feature was their only lifeline.

The phone trilled silently in the dark. Ring. Ring.

On the third ring, the line clicked open. The sound of heavy, anxious breathing filled the small speaker, followed by So-min’s hushed, trembling voice.

"Da-eun? Rora? Is that really you?"

"We're here," Da-eun whispered urgently, pressing the phone closer to her ear. "We bypassed the router lock. We only have a few minutes before In-ah notices the network rebooted."

"Thank god," So-min exhaled, her voice cracking with relief. "Listen to me. Right after you guys left, Do-hyun locked down the house and went somewhere. He was acting completely paranoid. Before he left, I found our old childhood photo album—the one from when we were six."

"We saw the file downloading," Rora whispered, leaning over Da-eun’s shoulder. "What's wrong with the photos?"

"Look closely at the summer trip photo," So-min said, her tone turning dead serious. "The one of the three of us at the old countryside playground near your grandfather's estate. Look at the background, behind the rusty swing set."

Da-eun quickly swiped over to the downloaded image, pinching her fingers on the screen to zoom in past their six-year-old selves. The photo was slightly grainy, but as the pixels cleared, a chill ran down her spine.

Parked on the dirt road just behind the tree line was a sleek, black luxury vehicle. Even from a distance, the custom silver trimming on the grill was unmistakable. It was the exact same model of the Kim family car they had seen idling outside their school just yesterday afternoon.

"The Kims," Da-eun murmured, her eyes wide. "They weren't just watching us yesterday. They’ve been monitoring this countryside area since we were children."

"Exactly," So-min whispered over the line. "Whatever happened seven years ago didn't just stay in the city. The roots of it are right out there where you are standing."

Before Da-eun could reply, a sudden, heavy thud echoed from the hallway outside their bedroom. The Wi-Fi signal on her phone instantly dropped to zero, cutting the call into dead static.

The line went dead, but as Da-eun stared at her phone, she realized the Wi-Fi signal hadn't been cut by In-ah. The router hadn't turned off—the ancient, fragile cabin network had simply crashed under the strain of the heavy data download, slipping back into a silent, blinking loop in the linen closet.

Across the room, In-ah’s door remained firmly shut. The deep, rhythmic sound of her breathing echoed faintly through the thin walls. She was still fast asleep, completely unaware that her sisters had outsmarted her digital lock.

Da-eun let out a long, shaky breath, her heart slowly resuming its normal pace. She turned the phone screen down, looking over at Rora in the dark.

"The connection died," Da-eun whispered, her voice barely a breath. "But we got the photo. We know what we're looking for now."

Rora pulled her knees to her chest, her eyes fixed on the grainy, zoomed-in image of the Kim family's luxury car parked in the background of their childhood memories. "If the Kims were tailing us all the way out here when we were six, then this countryside isn't a hiding place at all. In-ah brought us right into the center of their territory."

Da-eun opened her local notebook app, pulling up the manual map they had drawn during the car ride. Her eyes tracked the dotted line Rora had marked—the hidden valley shortcut that cut through the trees and bypassed the main roads back to the northern highway.

"So-min said the roots of the secret are out here," Da-eun said, tracing the path with her thumb. "The old orchard, the abandoned gas station, the valley road... one of these places holds the reason why our families tore themselves apart seven years ago."

Rora nodded, a look of quiet resolve replacing her fear. "Then tomorrow morning, the second In-ah leaves the cabin to get supplies, we don't sit around waiting. We map out the coordinates on foot."

Rora didn't hesitate. She crept back over to the bedroom door, cracked it open a fraction of an inch, and listened. In-ah’s steady breathing still echoed from the master bedroom.

"The gateway IP just needs a manual override since the DNS crashed," Rora murmured, slipping her phone out.

Instead of waiting for the router to fix itself, she went into her phone's advanced network settings. She switched the configuration from DHCP to a static IP address, typing in the standard default gateway numbers for the old router model.

Within seconds, the Wi-Fi icon on her screen blinked, turned solid, and lit up with full bars. The data pipeline was wide open again.

She quickly reopened the secure app and re-established the connection to So-min. The call connected with a soft chime.

"So-min, I got us back online," Rora whispered into the mic. "We don't have much time before the lease lease expires on this IP block. Did you find anything else in that photo album?"

"I'm looking at the next page right now," So-min’s voice came through, sharp and clear. "There's a picture of you guys playing near the old water tower by the orchard. But guys... look at the treeline behind you. There's a small wooden shed with a heavy padlock on it. In-ah is holding a key in her hand, and she looks like she's trying to hide it from the camera."

Da-eun pulled up the manual map on her own screen, her eyes scanning the layout Rora had drawn. "The old orchard water tower... that's less than a mile from this cabin if we take the hidden valley path."

"That has to be our first stop," Rora agreed, her eyes flashing in the dark.