He remembered silence more than he remembered sound.
Not the kind of silence you get when a room is empty. Not the kind that comes before a concert or after an argument. No, this silence was different. It was the kind that crawled under your skin and made a home there, the kind that rang louder than a scream, the kind that didn't just exist outside of you—but inside too.
That's what Ryu Ji-hoon heard the night his mother died.
He was twelve.
And blind.
Not from birth. The world used to have colors once. They blurred like wet ink now, like the memory of a dream someone else had. He could still taste red—his mother's lipstick when she kissed his forehead goodbye. He could still feel blue—the sky before it rained, right before everything went cold. And he could still smell it. The cologne.
The only thing the man left behind.
It wasn't just any cologne. It was sharp, with a smoky bite, like someone had bottled danger and called it expensive. Ji-hoon never found out what it was called. But he remembered it. The scent hit him before the scream ever did. Before the body hit the ground.
That was the last thing he remembered clearly.
That, and the sound of nothing.
Now he sat in a practice room built for perfect acoustics, surrounded by soundproof walls and polished wood. But all he could hear was the silence again.
His fingers hovered over the keys of the grand piano like they were afraid to touch it. He didn't need light to know what the room looked like. He'd memorized it. The bench he sat on was a little off balance—it tilted slightly to the left. There was a crack in one of the keys, middle C, but only he noticed it. Only he ever noticed things like that.
He didn't play.
Not yet.
The silence was still playing its own tune.
Then someone knocked.
Three short taps. Hesitant.
"Ji-hoon?" came a voice—low, male, careful. "You have ten minutes."
Joon-won. Manager. Best friend. Only friend. Only person who didn't look at him like he was glass about to crack.
Ji-hoon nodded. "Thanks."
He waited until the door clicked shut before lifting his hands again. His breath slowed. His back straightened. The tips of his fingers finally touched the keys like old lovers reconnecting.
He played one note.
Then another.
Then the silence shattered.
What came out wasn't a melody. Not really. It was more like the echo of a memory trying to take shape—uneven, aching, raw. His hands moved with practiced instinct, but the music sounded like it hurt to be born.
Because it did.
This wasn't the song he was supposed to perform.
This was the one he couldn't stop playing when no one was listening. The one his mother used to hum under her breath when she cooked. The one that played in his dreams. The one the man in the cologne interrupted forever.
He didn't remember the man's face.
But he remembered the music stopping.
Ji-hoon's fingers paused over a chord that didn't belong.
He didn't finish the piece.
Backstage smelled like nerves and cheap hairspray.
Joon-won waited by the door with Ji-hoon's tailored jacket in hand. "You always do this," he said, helping Ji-hoon into it. "You disappear into the piano like it's some kind of ghost."
Ji-hoon gave a small smile. "Maybe it is."
Joon-won didn't smile back.
"You okay?" he asked instead.
Ji-hoon shrugged. "As okay as someone can be who's about to perform for six thousand strangers with cameras."
"You've done it before."
"I know."
"That's not what I meant."
Ji-hoon turned his head slightly. "Then what did you mean?"
Joon-won hesitated. "You played her song again."
He didn't have to say whose.
"I always do," Ji-hoon said softly.
Joon-won didn't argue. There was no point. The wound was too deep, too old, too sharp.
"Alright," he finally said, patting Ji-hoon's shoulder. "Let's go. Don't trip."
The stage was a world of noise pretending to be silence.
The applause roared like waves crashing in Ji-hoon's ears, but it didn't reach him. He walked calmly, one hand trailing the edge of the stage for orientation, the other holding nothing but the ghost of his mother's lullaby.
The piano waited like a secret in the dark.
He sat.
He didn't bow.
He never did.
The silence stretched.
Someone coughed.
Someone else whispered.
A camera clicked.
Then he played.
And the world forgot to breathe.
He played the piece he was supposed to play this time—Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor. Every note perfect. Every pause calculated. The kind of performance that made critics weep and judges hand out gold medals.
But Ji-hoon wasn't playing for medals.
He was playing for memory.
Because deep in the back of his mind, underneath the technical perfection, under the clean rhythms and flawless tempo, was the scent of cologne.
And every time his fingers danced across the keys, he got closer to remembering what came after that smell.
The silence.
The scream.
The truth.
After the performance, the lights dimmed.
The applause returned like thunder.
Ji-hoon stood, bowed once—a small, tight motion—and let Joon-won lead him offstage.
They didn't speak until they were back in the green room.
Then Joon-won asked, "Did it happen again?"
Ji-hoon nodded.
"You saw something?"
"No. I felt something."
He sat down slowly on the couch, resting his hands on his knees. "It's always in the same spot. Middle of the second movement. Like a wall I'm about to walk through."
Joon-won leaned against the door. "And what's on the other side?"
Ji-hoon looked up, eyes blank but burning. "The man. The one who killed her."
Joon-won didn't ask how he knew.
Instead, he said, "There's someone here who wants to meet you."
Ji-hoon blinked. "A fan?"
"Not exactly. Journalist."
"I don't do interviews."
"This one's different. She said she knows something."
Ji-hoon stilled.
"About what?"
"About your mother."
The woman's voice was smooth. Like radio static made elegant.
"My name is Lee Ji-eun," she said, sitting across from Ji-hoon. "I'm not just a journalist."
Ji-hoon tilted his head. "Then what are you?"
"Someone who wants to help you find the man with the cologne."
That got his attention.
"You know him?"
"I know of him. My brother…" she hesitated, "might have worked with him once. A long time ago. Back when he was still in the conservatory."
Ji-hoon leaned forward slowly. "What's your brother's name?"
She smiled, but it didn't reach her voice.
"Yoon Si-wan."
Ji-hoon didn't react.
Not on the outside.
Inside, though, something cracked.
Yoon Si-wan.
He'd heard the name before. Recently. In a list of finalists for the International Symphony Awards. Another pianist. Rising star. Media darling.
And suddenly, Ji-hoon wasn't thinking about his performance.
He was thinking about a name whispered in a hallway.
About a cologne in a crowd.
About a ghost in a suit and gloves.
Later that night, Ji-hoon sat alone in his hotel room.
He didn't sleep.
He never really did.
Instead, he opened the small notebook he kept hidden in his coat.
It was filled with smells.
Descriptions of them.
Because sound wasn't the only way he remembered.
Page one read:
"Cedarwood. Bergamot. Smoke. Something bitter underneath."
Under that, one word.
"Him."
He added a note under it.
"Yoon Si-wan?"
He didn't know yet.
But the silence did.
And it was getting louder.
Ji-hoon didn't leave the room.
Not for hours.
Not even when Joon-won knocked, twice, asking if he wanted food.
The notebook stayed open on his lap, its pages covered in neat, precise handwriting. Each scent, each emotion, categorized like a memory he was afraid to lose again.
He traced the name with one finger.
Yoon Si-wan.
A name like a note played too cleanly. Too perfect. He'd heard it whispered by judges, gushed over by fans, printed on glossy magazines passed around backstage. He never cared. Until now.
Now, it burned.
He shut the notebook, stood, and walked to the window. Not that he could see the city lights below, but he liked knowing they were there. Noise hummed beneath the glass—car horns, faint music from some late-night bar, the white noise of Seoul that never really slept.
He pressed his hand against the cold pane.
And remembered the night everything ended.
It had been raining.
He remembered the smell of it—wet pavement, old books, and burning food. His mother had left the stove on while answering a call. She always did that. Forgot things when she got too excited. Or nervous.
Ji-hoon had been playing piano in the living room.
Then the doorbell rang.
Three times. Sharp. Fast.
He never heard what the man said.
But he heard her tone.
Not the words.
Just… fear.
Like she was trying to stay calm. Like she knew something he didn't. Like she'd been waiting for that knock.
He smelled the cologne before the scream.
That cologne.
He froze.
And in the next few seconds—everything stopped.
Even the rain.
He didn't tell Joon-won about the flashback.
Didn't tell him about the way his hand had trembled against the window glass or how his breath caught like a skipped note in a broken song.
Instead, he said: "Find out everything you can about Yoon Si-wan."
Joon-won didn't argue. "Already on it."
"You think it's him?"
"I think it's someone close to him," Ji-hoon said, voice low. "No one just knows that cologne. She wasn't guessing. She brought his name to me."
Joon-won nodded slowly. "You think she's trying to warn you?"
"I think she's trying to confess."
The next day, Ji-hoon returned to the conservatory where he once studied.
The halls still creaked in the same places.
The same cold draft slipped under the doors. Same smell of coffee and rosin and ambition.
He walked slowly, fingers grazing the walls for landmarks only he knew: the chipped paint beneath the trophy case, the scuff on the floor outside Room 3B, the broken tile no one ever fixed.
He stopped outside the practice room with the grand piano.
Room 507.
Her favorite.
His mother used to teach in that room before she died.
Ji-hoon never came back to it.
Not until now.
He opened the door.
The piano was still there.
Covered in dust.
Forgotten.
He walked to it, sat down slowly, and let his hands rest on the keys.
They felt colder than they should have.
He played a single chord.
The acoustics hadn't changed.
Neither had the silence.
Then he heard a step behind him.
Not Joon-won's.
Not anyone he knew.
"Beautiful," said a voice he hadn't heard before. Smooth. Polished. Friendly in that effortless way that made his skin crawl.
"I didn't realize this room still echoed."
Ji-hoon didn't turn around. "You're standing in her room."
The man paused. "Her?"
"My mother."
Another pause.
"Ah."
Ji-hoon listened closely.
The faintest hint of something sharp hung in the air.
Not sweat. Not cologne.
Nail polish remover?
No—cleaner.
Like someone who'd just come from a place too sterile to be real.
Hospital?
Studio?
Ji-hoon asked, "Who are you?"
The man walked closer.
"I'm someone who's been meaning to meet you," he said. "Yoon Si-wan sends his regards."
Then he left.
Just like that.
No threats.
No warnings.
Just a name and a scent and a silence that felt like a countdown.
Ji-hoon stayed still long after the door closed.
His fingers still resting on the keys.
He didn't know who that man was.
But he knew this:
The game had started.
And someone just played the opening move.
Back at the hotel, Joon-won was waiting with a tablet in his hand and worry on his face.
"I did some digging."
Ji-hoon took off his coat. "How deep?"
"Deep enough to find out Yoon Si-wan's not just a pianist."
Ji-hoon froze.
"He's a patron. Owns part of a music production company. Donates anonymously to scholarships. And—get this—his name is linked to a police report filed thirteen years ago."
Ji-hoon's throat tightened. "Where?"
"Busan."
That's where they lived before they moved to Seoul.
Before the murder.
Joon-won added, "The report was sealed. But I got part of the metadata."
He handed Ji-hoon the tablet.
Ji-hoon ran his fingers across the screen like it could speak to him.
"Who filed it?"
A beat.
Then Joon-won whispered, "Your mother."