The Letters We Were Meant to Find

The Compass

CHAPTER 2

THE COMPASS

Ethan Kwon stood alone in the quiet of his apartment, the city glowing beneath him through walls of glass. Rain continued to fall over Shanghai, blurring the lights below into long streaks of silver and gold. In his hand lay the small compass he had carried for twenty years.

He turned it slowly between his fingers.

It was old. The silver casing was scratched along one edge, and the glass had a faint crack near the center. To anyone else, it would have looked like an ordinary keepsake. To Ethan, it was the one object that had never allowed him to forget the questions his father had left behind.

Daniel Kwon had given it to him when he was fifteen.

“Keep this,” his father had said.

Ethan remembered the seriousness in his voice. He had never understood it then.

“Why?”

“Because one day, you may need to find your way back.”

“Back to where?”

His father had not answered.

Instead, he had closed Ethan's fingers around the compass and walked away.

For years, Ethan had wondered what he meant.

Tonight, he finally had a clue.

Samuel Lin.

The name had returned to his life through a woman he had never expected to meet.

Amara Lin.

Ethan walked to his desk and opened the old wooden drawer where he kept his father's belongings. Beneath several documents was a faded photograph of Daniel and Samuel standing beside a lake. They looked young, confident, almost carefree.

Ethan turned it over.

Three words were written on the back.

FIND HER FIRST.

He stared at the message.

His father had known Amara would eventually become part of the mystery.

But why?

Ethan picked up the compass again.

The needle moved.

Then stopped.

Not north.

It pointed directly toward the photograph.

For the first time in twenty years, Ethan felt afraid of what his father had left behind.