Before condemning him, she just wanted to bring him back. Before hating him, she wanted to ask. She wanted to reclaim him. The only thing in her life that had ever truly been hers—she wanted it back. But...

“Sister.”

A strange voice called out to her. Only then did Seoryeong realize she was standing in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

“......!”

...That’s odd. She blinked rapidly, startled. The statue, which should’ve been nothing but a blur, almost looked visible.

If she got a little closer, she felt like she might really see it.

It was a sensation she hadn’t experienced since her symptoms began. I think I can see it—what an absurd thought.

And yet, she felt something strange. As she rubbed her eyes and took a step forward—

“Sister, your nose is bleeding...!”

The elderly priest’s face turned pale.

“Ah...”

She reacted blankly, then casually tore off a flyer stuck to the statue and wiped her nose with it.

“You really don’t look well. Not at all...”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

She hastily turned her body away, then paused—tap, tap, tapping her stick—before looking back at the priest. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

“Father, do you really believe in things you can’t see?”

Even as she threw the question at him with no warning, the old priest didn’t flinch. Seoryeong looked so thin and pale, with lips trembling, that he felt only pity. Still, her posture remained upright, and he found himself inexplicably drawn to it.

“I’m sorry to say this, but maybe you’ve been fooled. Don’t end up a fool like me—open your eyes while you still can.”

“Sister, not everything needs to be seen to be understood.”

“That could just be delusion...!”

“Do we always need a reason to believe in something?”

Panting, she irritably pushed back her hair. The thick fear and distrust that had clung to her for so long finally burst out like an explosion. She couldn’t stop herself from speaking.

“I don’t know... I don’t know, and that’s why I’m like this...!”

Clutching her stick, she bent over, almost gagging. She coughed dryly, and her parched throat burned.

“I didn’t even know his face. I just... loved him anyway. His hands were the warmest, the biggest I’d ever held, and I thought that was my salvation. I couldn’t help falling for him. Of course I did...! I spent all my time holding the rough hands of patients—I’d never held a hand like his before...!”

“.......”

“There was no one like him in my world...”

Now she wiped her eyes instead of her nose. Her tear ducts burned. Words she hadn’t been able to say anywhere else poured out like water.

“I wondered if he was sleeping well. If he chewed his food properly. That’s all I ever worried about, like a fool. Even when I looked a little tired, he’d get flustered, not knowing what to do.”

“.......”

“To me, he was a miracle.”

But she'd forgotten that life could come crashing down in an instant.

“He disappeared... He vanished without a trace...”

A bitter smile spread across her lips. The constant ache in her chest had become all too familiar.

I want to find you. I really don’t think I can let you go like this.

“...It’s just, somehow it all came to me too easily.”

Her bloodless face still looked stunned, as if she couldn’t believe any of it. Leaning on nothing but a stick, she’d lost her way.

“Even so, sister... today’s coincidence may be God’s will.”

The priest, who had been listening quietly, took the flyer from her hand and opened it with care.

“Matthew 7:7—‘Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.’”

Startled, she took the flyer from him almost by instinct.

It wasn’t her imagination.

Though still blurry, for a fleeting moment, the fog in her vision seemed to lift. She blinked in surprise.

***

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***

Several devices examined her, until finally a round penlight shone into her eye.

The ophthalmologist tilted his head again and again, as if unable to make sense of what he was seeing. He even rubbed his temples and groaned under his breath.

“You say you’ve been able to see things for a few days now?”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense...”

She couldn’t understand it either. When she was first diagnosed with retinal degeneration, they told her it might be genetic—or that sometimes, these things just happen. There was no warning. It was painful, but it made sense.

It was something that had simply... happened to her.

But what was this?

“I think... I’ll °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° need to report this to the medical board.”

“Is it that serious?”

“Yes, I’ve never seen a case like this in all my years as an ophthalmologist.”

Though it had unfolded over several weeks, the hazy blur in her vision was slowly clearing.

It wasn’t a mistake. Even now, she could vaguely make out the doctor’s facial features.

She felt like she’d see even better if she wore corrective lenses. Her pulse quickened.

Just when she thought her life had plunged into a pit, it flipped upside down.

Her husband vanished. And now, the fog in her eyes was vanishing too. It was too much of a coincidence.

Maybe God really was fair—alternating illness and healing, then taking both back again.

“Is it possible my eyes... weren’t really diseased?”

Seoryeong spoke before she even understood what she was asking.

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t know. She just couldn’t shake the sense that her husband’s disappearance and this anomaly were somehow connected.

What did her vision have to do with Kim Hyun’s disappearance?

But her degeneration had appeared out of nowhere—and now it was vanishing the same way.

Just like Kim Hyun. He had shown up at her lowest point. And now, as she fell into despair again, the light was returning. Lately, her mind was filled with thoughts so irrational they bordered on madness. Even the cop who’d told her to go to a hospital suddenly sounded like he’d been giving decent advice.

“When I was first diagnosed, I was told there was no hope for recovery.”

“That’s true. This disease is essentially incurable. From your chart, your progression was also acute. And now, suddenly, it’s reversing.”

The doctor rubbed his chin, speaking cautiously.

“You were first diagnosed two and a half years ago, correct?”

“Yes.”

“It really does seem temporary in retrospect.”

She watched the doctor skeptically as he spoke.

“It’s something the medical field should study, but... if your optic nerve and retina were somehow paralyzed, and that paralysis has now lifted, then technically, it’s not impossible.”

“......!”

“But as a physician, I’ve never heard of a case like this. Temporarily paralyzing the optic nerve is extremely difficult. It’d be easier to just cause blindness outright. This implies your nerve was being regularly interfered with—”

He gave a shrug.

“It’s malicious, no matter how you look at it—even as a hypothesis.”

...That’s what I thought, too.

She quietly tightened her grip on her stick.

Once a week, it was her husband who put in her eye drops. Because he was there, she didn’t feel wronged or alone. As she blinked to help the medicine coat her eyes, he would always lean in and kiss her eyelids.

“With this level of recovery, I think you’ll regain your original vision without issue. Let’s keep monitoring you!”

The doctor clenched his fist in excited resolve. As Seoryeong absentmindedly touched her eye, she asked,

“By the way, has my attending doctor changed?”

“Ah, yes...!”

The doctor adjusted his glasses and smiled brightly, as if realizing something.

“Sorry for the delay in telling you. I’ve taken over for Dr. Park. She was offered a great opportunity—she’s been appointed a professor at Johns Hopkins starting this semester.”

“.......”

Her husband wasn’t the only one who had disappeared. Strangely, many people seemed to have vanished with him.

Was that too absurd a thought?

What she wanted now were answers. Not guesses, not assumptions—real, clear answers. A thread that could tie all the scattered fragments together.

But she had a feeling that neither the police, nor the priest, nor the doctor could explain any of it.

***

“The name was fake. The company, the license plate—they were all fake. So the national ID number is useless too. All the villa’s security cameras, even the alleyway ones—they’re gone. The neighbors we lived beside? They vanished too. No witnesses. Even so—can you still find my husband?”

The voice was flat, emotionless—just a recitation of facts.

The private investigator looked stunned for a moment, lips parted, then quickly covered it with a smile. Her voice was cynical, completely devoid of hope, but the desperation in her expression made it fascinating. The man’s narrow, slit-like eyes gleamed with competitive interest.

“It’ll be difficult... but certainly entertaining. We’ll start at four million won. Is that acceptable?”

Seoryeong nodded without a flicker of emotion.