A flash of lightning bright enough to permeate my closed eyelids roused me from sleep inside the taxi cab. I shifted in my seat. My neck hurt from possibly more than an hour of slumbering slouched in the backseat of the vehicle. I moved my head this way and that, hoping to relieve some of the muscle tension before I reached my destination.

The cab driver, a man in his forties, asked me something from the front. He asked if I needed to be at the place quickly. I barely understood him but I still nodded. We were silent again until he said, this time in halting, heavily-accented English, "You are not Korean. You look Korean but not speak Korean good."

I understood better, if not for the dulled "ar" sound.

"I was born here," I replied in halting, heavily-accented Korean. "But I lived in America since I was a baby."

"Ah! America!" the driver exclaimed. "I get many tourists...come here for idol, Hallyu wave." He pronounced the last word as "whey-beh". "Bangtan," he added, grinning. The driver pointed outside the passenger window but I couldn't see anything save the dew and the rain pelting the car.

"Where you go, like idol group a long time ago, very old time," he added, the jovial sound in his voice gone.

I nodded to myself. I knew I wasn't visiting an idol group but still a group nonetheless. A very old and revered group who could very well have been the "idols" of their time, had circumstances not been so dire. But I wasn't on my way there for superficial reasons. I had many questions that needed answering.

Like why my mother, even with her ties to the place, never wanted anything to do with it, even claiming a hatred for the property. It was a hatred so palpable and obvious, she never told me I inherited it from my grandmother, a woman I only knew from a single old photograph I unearthed as a child in my mother's bedroom.

Three months ago, after getting the assignment of doing cover stories on reunited families torn by war, a colleague fed me the idea of doing one featuring my own story. It was no secret in the workplace that I was Korean by birth and that my parents immediately migrated to the United States after. They also knew we never went back and the reason I gave was because my mother and grandmother had a falling out. My own father kept mum about the argument and my questions were either answered with an evil eye or a slap on the face.

I thought about going back to Korea for some time before finally deciding. Tradition dictated I inform my parents of that decision. Needless to say, my mother called forth an emotional storm while blurting out I was the heir to my grandmother's property and railed against me going back, quickly necessitating a trip to the emergency room to bring down her blood pressure and prevent a . But I was adamant; I felt the compulsion to go. It was now or never. I had to know.

I felt the cab turn right and up, the view getting clearer as the downpour lessened. I peered through the window and gazed up at the tall graystone building looming above us. Trees of a kind I was not familiar with obscured the view as the taxi rounded another corner. The road became narrower, I observed. My mobile phone pinged and I looked at the warning: SIGNAL LOST.

The cab stopped then in front of wrought iron gates reminiscent of gothic art: tapering points with various curlicues and leaf motifs linking each black metal spike. The intercom stuck to a side was like an aberration. The driver rolled his window down and spoke into the unit. A disembodied voice answered and the gates opened automatically. We drove through and came to a rotunda built around a huge tree. The driver stopped the taxi at the base of a series of steps leading to large wooden doors.

A door opened and an elderly woman came out with a large black umbrella. I immediately got out of the car and helped the driver take out my two large suitcases from the trunk. I did not mind the rain but was thankful when the umbrella came above my head. The driver hurried up the steps with one of my suitcases. I turned to take the umbrella from the woman and found her to be short and stocky and old. Very old.

Still unable to say anything with the wet and cold, I let her hold the umbrella and grabbed the other suitcase up the steps and into the door where I found the cab driver looking about him. I reached into my suit pocket and took out a handful of bills, telling the driver to keep the change. After bowing to each other profusely for an entire minute, he finally left me.

I looked down at the old woman who had her back bowed forward, greeting me with the traditional Korean words I only ever heard in sageuk or historical Korean dramas. I chuckled and touched her shoulder. The woman positively recoiled and stepped back. Surprised, I pulled my hand away. Perhaps she didn't want to be touched, I thought.

"I'm sorry but do you speak English?" I asked politely. She slowly looked up and met my eyes for a moment before sliding her gaze away.

"She can't, unfortunately but she does understand some," a voice said from somewhere in the hall. I peered in the late afternoon gloom and watched as a man around my age approached. He was dressed in a warm woollen sweater and corduroy slacks, I almost felt envious. He raised a hand to shake; I took it.

"Nice to finally meet you, Mister Kang," he greeted. "I'm Yoo Gi Tae but you can call me Gi Tae. We spoke on the phone."

"Ah, yes, we did!" I said. "I hope this is not too much of an imposition—"

"Oh, no no! This is all yours anyway!" he argued. "There's hot tea in the parlor room for you. Let Madame Lee take care of your luggage."

"But my stuff are very heavy," I started to argue when two young women came out of nowhere and began hoisting the suitcases to somewhere.

"I'll give you a tour of the house later but for now, let's warm you up," Gi Tae said, steering me towards the opposite direction from where my suitcases were taken. The interior of the house was poorly lit and Gi Tae was quick to pick up on my apprehension.

"Electricity easily shuts down in this part of the province when there's inclement weather," he explained, opening a door to our left. "Cables have never been replaced since the Japanese occupation. Come to think of it, nothing much has in here."

I entered a room already as big as my own apartment in New York and he called it the "parlor". Edna Matthews, a romance novelist and a friend, would have loved to see this place. The furniture, the decor...everything screamed elegance and opulence...

From the Victorian era.

As if Gi Tae could read my thought