A violent, bone-chilling blizzard screams through the desolate valley bordering the northern mountains. The sky is a bruised purple, nearly black, and the snow falls so thick it feels like a suffocating shroud. Through the blinding white, a jagged shadow stumbles. It is a man, or what remains of one. His traditional silk robes, once fine, are shredded and soaked in a terrifying shade of frozen crimson. A jagged puncture from a blade gapes at his midsection, and his breath comes in ragged, rattling gasps that freeze instantly in the air. He is a ghost walking toward a memory.

His body finally gives up. Yoongi collapses face-first into the deep snow beside the fence, his heart slowing into a fragile, fading rhythm. The storm begins to bury him. Snow gathers on his shoulders. On his hair. On the blood-stained silk. The wind screams through the valley. Minutes pass. Or maybe hours. Then— The wooden door of the cottage creaks open.

The man does not move. His pulse is a faint thread, invisible to the world. The storm worsens, erasing the footprints of the monster who has finally come home to die.

Inside the small, humble cottage, the air is thick with the scent of bitter medicinal herbs—dried mugwort and boiled ginger. The howling blizzard outside is now just a muffled hum against the thick paper doors. Yoongi lies on a thin floor pallet, his body wrapped in coarse but clean white linen bandages. The "dead man" has returned from the threshold, his pulse slow and stubborn.

The sliding door (shoji) creaks open. A figure enters carrying a steaming wooden basin. The steam veils his face for a moment, but as he kneels, the light from the single candle catches the curve of his jaw. It is him. Elegant, simple, his hair tied back in a modest style. The innocence is still there, but his eyes... they are no longer soft. They are like deep, still wells of cold water.

Jimin stands and exits without a backward glance, leaving Yoongi alone in the dim light. Yoongi stares at the ceiling, the "suspense" of his own survival weighing on him. He came here to see a ghost, but he found a stranger and a child who carries his own reflection.

Mid-afternoon. The pale winter sun bleeds through the paper doors, casting long, skeletal shadows across the room. Yoongi is propped up against the wall, his face a ghostly white against the dark wood. Through the crack in the sliding door, he watches the life he missed. In the main area, Jimin is kneeling, mending a small tunic with quick, aggressive stiches. By his side sits the child—Haneul—practicing characters on a wooden slate with an intensity that mirrors Jimin’s own.

Jimin stands up to move a heavy pot of water. He winces, his breath hitching from the physical toll of running a household alone in the dead of winter. Yoongi’s hand twitches—instinctively wanting to reach out—but he remains a 'stranger' behind the door.