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“Three years…”
Gran’s voice came out as a whisper.

Frail.

Shaking.

As if every word carried the weight of a buried past.

“Three years, Ivory…” she repeated, her gaze distant, lost somewhere far beyond the room.

“It took me three years to finally believe what I saw… what I touched that day.”

Her fingers trembled slightly over her lap.
“What happened… was beyond science. Beyond logic. Beyond… humans.”

Silence wrapped around everyone like a suffocating blanket.

“I was too young to understand… but too old to dismiss it as imagination.”
Her lips quivered.

“My dada… he used to tell me stories about them… about creatures that lived hidden from us.”

She paused.

Took a deep, uneven breath.

“And that day… I realized those stories were real.”

Seokjin immediately moved closer, worry flooding his face.
“Gran…” he called softly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

But she continued—

As if stopping now would break her completely.

“After that incident… we never went back,” she said.
“But I wanted to. I needed to.”
Her eyes glistened.

“I wanted to see that little pup again… just once…”

A faint, broken smile appeared.

“But dada refused. He said our presence would bring chaos to them…”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“And by chaos… he meant humans.”

A collective chill ran through the room.

“He never wanted scientists to find them… never wanted reporters to expose them…”

Her fingers clenched tightly.

“Because if they did…”

Her voice cracked.

“They would become nothing but subjects for experiments.”

A pause.
Heavy.
Painful.
And then—

“The explosion…”
Her breathing hitched.

Seokjin tightened his hold around her.
“Gran, it’s okay—”

“No,” she shook her head weakly. “Let me finish…”

“It was all over the news…”
Her voice trembled violently now.

“The forest… burned down… because of some border dispute…”

Her eyes shut tightly as tears rolled down.
“The entire jungle… gone… just like that…”

A tear slipped from her eyes.
“I was only six…”

Her voice broke.
“I wanted my dada…”

A soft sob escaped her.
“But… he left me that same day…”

Silence.

No one dared to speak.

“I lost him…”

Another tear fell.

“And I lost her too…”

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