The silence after Ha-ru's departure was a living entity. It wasn't the peaceful quiet they were accustomed to, but a resonant emptiness that seemed to amplify every small sound—the creak of a floorboard, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant cry of a gull. For the first few days, Min Jae and Seo-jun moved through the house like ghosts, their routines disrupted, their focus scattered. They would both instinctively turn, expecting to see their son bent over a book or hear his voice from another room.
It was Seo-jun who broke the spell. On the third morning, he came into the kitchen, his eyes still puffy from another wave of quiet tears, and declared, "This won't do." He began pulling out flour, eggs, and sugar with a determined energy Min Jae hadn't seen in days. "We're making cookies. The messy, complicated kind with three types of chocolate. And we're going to eat them for breakfast."
