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Chapter Four: The Living Ghost
If Kang Sae-jin had really died, someone forgot to tell the Ministry of the Interior.
There was no digital record of cremation, no notice of enshrinement. Her death hadn't been processed by any hospital in Seoul. Her body had allegedly been taken directly from her apartment to a funeral hall—but no funeral staff had signed her name. No paperwork, no casket tracking, no ashes claimed.
Yet the nation mourned.
Black ribbons adorned her childhood photos. Her mother wept in rehearsed silence. And every entertainment outlet reported the same script, almost word-for-word.
> "Actress Kang Sae-jin found dead in her home. Suicide suspected. Family requests privacy."
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The night Eunha posted the redacted letter, someone emailed her from an untraceable ProtonMail account. No greeting. No threats.
Just a single video.
It was grainy—filmed through glass, probably from a nearby building—but it showed a woman stepping out of a van in the underground garage of what looked like a private psychiatric hospital.
The timestamp?
April 4th, 2025.
Over a week after her supposed death.
The woman had her head down, a hoodie pulled tightly over her face. But her walk... Eunha compared it with old red carpet clips. The exact same limp in the right heel. The same left-handed grip on the bag.
She enhanced the footage and slowed it down.
It was Kang Sae-jin.
She was alive.
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At Ji-hoon's agency, Attorney Jang was already chasing the same trail. His investigators had found something buried in a side notice on a hospital's April 1st registry: a patient admitted under the alias "Han Eun-seo", born in 2000, no family visitation allowed.
A "strict hold" case. Psychiatric observation.
The photo ID provided? Blurry. But when compared with Sae-jin's driver's license, the facial geometry was nearly identical.
Min-kyu sat across from Jang in stunned silence. "You're telling me she faked it?"
"No," Jang said. "I'm telling you someone made her disappear."
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Back online, the smear campaign against Ji-hoon had begun to falter. Netizens were asking new questions:
Why was the photo she posted with Ji-hoon from March 2024, not any earlier?
Why did her family never file a defamation suit against him?
Why did YouTuber Kim Se-ui—who had been the loudest voice pushing the rumor—go silent after being sued?
Then came a post from a medical intern on a locked Korean forum:
> "I was working night shift. A woman came in on March 28 with wrist injuries. She was terrified. I heard her whisper to the nurse: 'He didn't do anything. But they're going to blame him.'"
The intern was fired two days later.
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In Nigeria, Eunha felt her hands trembling as she stared at the footage on repeat.
Her roommate finally broke the silence. "This is too big. Why would they fake her death?"
Eunha didn't blink. Her voice was calm.
"Because if she's dead, no one can question her lies."