Chapter Three: The Message
The message came at 2:14 a.m.
Eunha had just closed her laptop, the spreadsheet now bloated with over fifty contradictory posts, translated interviews, and screenshots archived from disappearing Instagram stories. She had been ready to sleep when her phone buzzed.
The sender was anonymous. No profile photo. No username.
> "Stop digging. Or you'll end up just like her."
Eunha sat up, her heart knocking in her chest. She screenshot the message, blocked the number, and turned on her flashlight, suddenly suspicious of every shadow on her dorm room wall.
She told herself it was just a troll. Some obsessed fan. Maybe one of those unstable followers who'd been sending Ji-hoon death threats. But then, ten minutes later, another message arrived—this time from a different account. This one wasn't a threat.
It was a Dropbox link.
And one sentence:
> "She wrote the real letter. But they never showed it."
Eunha hesitated.
Her instincts screamed not to open it—but her curiosity was louder.
The folder inside contained a single file: "sj-letter-2023.pdf"
It was scanned from paper. Written in messy, hurried handwriting. The lines were slanted, as if written in tears. There were smudges on some of the letters. But what struck Eunha the most was the content.
> "I didn't want to be a monster. I didn't want to turn on him. But they said I had no choice. That if I didn't speak, they'd leak the club video. The pills. The abortion. Everything."
> "They wanted a name. A famous one. They chose him."
> "I'm sorry, Ji-hoon. You didn't do anything to me. I swear on my sister's life."
> "They're watching me. They say if I say the wrong thing, I'll disappear like I never existed."
The final line chilled her blood:
> "If this letter ever gets out, it means I didn't make it out alive."
---
Eunha didn't sleep that night.
By morning, the link was gone. The sender had deleted their account. But she had the file.
And she had a mission.
She uploaded the letter to a locked archive and posted a censored version to the fan forum. She left out the most incriminating details—for now. She wanted to see what would happen.
And the reactions came fast.
> "This is fake. Handwriting looks too mature."
"Photoshop."
"Ji-hoon fans are getting desperate."
But some replies were different.
One user, "MidnightChime", messaged her privately.
> "I knew her. I knew Sae-jin. That handwriting is real. She wrote me a letter in high school. I still have it. The loops in her 'g' and 's'… that's her."
Eunha stared at the message.
This wasn't just online sleuthing anymore. This was evidence.
---
Meanwhile, in Seoul, Ji-hoon's agency received a tip from a legal clerk at the Ministry of Health. It was anonymous, but it said only this:
> "There's no cremation file. No death certificate. Check the March 28th registry. She's not listed."
Ji-hoon's manager ran the search.
Nothing.
No entry for Kang Sae-jin. No cremation. No burial. No official record of death.
He called the lawyer immediately. "If she's not dead, then where is she?"
But Attorney Jang didn't answer right away.
He simply said: "That's the wrong question."
Pause.
"The real question is: who wants the world to think she's dead?"