I was born and raised in a small village. At the end of the village road stood an old wooden house, where a seventy-year-old man had lived alone for decades. People called him Old Crane.

No one in the village truly knew his past; they only knew of one strange rule: absolutely no woman was ever allowed to step inside his house.

If a woman passed by, he would slam the door shut. If anyone accidentally set foot on his threshold, he would angrily drive them away. And so, his house became a forbidden place, full of mystery. The adults avoided it, while children were consumed with curiosity. As I grew older, my curiosity grew even stronger.

One dim moonlit night, with the wind howling through the bamboo groves, I decided to do what no one in the village dared: sneak into that house.

When the clock struck midnight, I crept through the deserted alley, my heart pounding wildly. The rotten wooden gate creaked open. In the darkness, the house loomed eerily, as if ready to swallow me whole.

Inside, the silence was so complete I could hear my heartbeat. The smell of old wood mixed with mold stifled my breath. Step by cautious step, my eyes adjusted to the gloom.

And then I froze.

On all four walls hung portraits of women. Some were drawn in charcoal, others in faded watercolor. Dozens, even hundreds of faces, each with different expressions: sadness, melancholy, even gentle smiles. Yet all radiated an indescribable chill, as if they were watching my every move.

In the center of the main room stood a bust of a young woman, her face tender, her long hair cascading down. Moonlight seeped through the window cracks, falling on the sculpture, giving it a lifelike presence that chilled me to the bone.

I trembled and stepped back—when suddenly, a raspy cough echoed behind me.

“Who… who dares to come in here?”

I spun around. There he was—Old Crane. Frail in figure, yet his aged eyes still shone piercingly bright. That gaze cut straight into my chest. I stammered an apology, but he only sighed and sat down on a wooden chair.

He wasn’t angry. Instead, he began to tell his story.

At twenty, he had been deeply in love with a girl named Lan. The whole village admired their devotion. But on the eve of their wedding, tragedy struck: Lan died in an accident. The shock turned him to stone. He swore never to let another woman enter his home again, for in his heart there was room for only one.

Those sketches and statues were his way of preserving her memory. Night after night, he sat alone, drawing her face over and over from memory. Year after year, he turned his house into a shrine of remembrance, worshiping a love forever lost.

As I listened, I shivered—not from fear, but from the pain and loneliness that cracked through his husky voice. People thought him eccentric, but in truth, he was just an old man, trapped in a past he could never escape.

His eyes softened as he looked at me.

“You are the first to dare step in here. You see… there are no ghosts. Only a foolish old man still talking to his memories.”

I could not speak. I only bowed my head in silence. That night, I left his house just before dawn, my heart heavy.

After that, every time I passed by the old wooden house, I no longer felt fear. Instead, I felt pity—for a heart buried for half a century under the weight of an unfinished promise.

His story taught me this: there are wounds that time will never heal. All one can do is learn how to live with them.