The Garden Beyond the Noise
The car dropped him at the end of the gravel drive, its headlights sweeping once across the iron gate before the driver reversed and disappeared into the dark, back toward the highway, back toward the world that never seemed to sleep. Jimin stood there for a long moment with his duffel bag slung over one shoulder, listening to the silence settle around him like snow.
No shouting. No flashing lights. No one calling his name as though it were a possession they had every right to claim.
He exhaled, and the breath came out shakier than he expected, as if his body had been holding it for months.
The estate rose ahead of him, pale stone catching the thin wash of moonlight, its windows dark except for a single lamp glowing in what he remembered as his grandmother's sitting room. She wouldn't be awake — not at this hour, not in her condition — but she always left that lamp burning, an old habit from a lifetime of waiting for someone to come home. He wondered, briefly, if some part of her still waited for his grandfather, dead eleven years now, or if the light was simply for him, a promise she'd made and never broken.
He didn't ring the bell. He had his own key, tarnished with age, and…