So can you make like mixed sfw + a lil smut headcanons for Kyungjun from Night Has Come?🤭
Go Kyungjung | boyfriend headcanons
pairing: Go Kyung-Jun x gn!reader
genre: fluff, smut (mdni!), wc: 676
warnings: smut, edging, public sex, bj
a/n: English isn’t my first language so please bare with any grammar mistakes
@nyxayss: (>᎑<๑)/♡
sfw
- mean tease: if you're listening to music with your airpods and your phone lies somewhere out of your reach, he would just turn off your bluetooth
- runs away with your phone, asking you to catch him
- the type of boy who's mean to you to show he's interested: if you're wearing a ponytail, he's tugging on your hair, will search up weird stuff on your phone and claim that the school ministry can see it because you were using the school WiFi
- always chilling in your room just because he likes spending time with you
- emotionally intelligent, so he will pick up on anything you're trying to hide from him, bugging you about it until you finally spill it out
- at the beginning of your relationship he'd try to hide it but he's super emotional
- totally cries while watching sad movies but leaves the room with a weak excuse so you wouldn't see
- likes fashion trends and will gift you stuff (if there's a new sneaker dropping, trust you and him are the first to have them)
- forces you to play basketball with him, using the excuse of helping you with your form to keep his hands on your body at all times -> will cheer excessively, high fives and spinning you in the air for every time the ball even brushes the hoop
- takes a bunch of selfies with your phone and claims that you'll ask him for pictures anyway so he might as well do it beforehand— you'll actually find pictures of him in your phone on days you didn't even notice him snatch it
- he knows your passcode and you know his
- matching wallpapers
- falls asleep on your shoulder all the time, no matter the location
- deliberately "forgets" his stuff at your place like old T-Shirts or occasionally even a jacket just to watch you claim it, wearing the over sized stuff like a trophy
- always shares his food with you and won't hesitate to grab yours either, you're getting his first bite and he's taking your left-overs
- seats you on his lap at every occasion and likes resting his chin on your shoulder cause that way he can lazily kiss a trail up your neck
- won't hesitate to throw hands if someone is either chatting you up or bothering you — he doesn't see the difference, just your discomfort and that's making him mad
- super silly, so he'll be in for everything: build a bear, indoor playground (acing, challenging you to keep up with him)
- the second the word "bet" or "challenge" leaves your mouth, he's in
- spontaneous dates: knocks on your window just to show you that he's so athletic, he can make it up there
- spontaneous sleepovers: delieberately comes over when it's super late so he can be like "I'll just crash here, yeah? It's already super late and I'm so tired-"
- will send you thirst traps of himself
nsfw
- insane stamina like he can go multiple rounds as a warm up
- a mean tease: will edge you for hours because he loves the look of frustration on your face
- will ask you a million times what you want him to do because he loves how colorful your vocabulary gets when you're frustrated
- public sex, risks accepted cause he couldn't care less if someone saw "Shh. It's okay, just focus on me."
- acts of service for every blowjob — if you wake him up with one, he'd play personal assistant all day
- if you're the one initating the sex, you're not living it down easily "Are you that down bad for me? You need me to take care of you?"
- easily manhandles you
- lives for hickeys, on you to mark his territory and on him because he loves seeing how you seemingly can't get enough from him
- films you a lot especially while riding him but he wouldn't show it to anyone — the material is just for him to rewatch later
- FaceTimes you before going to sleep and on certain days he'd ask you to help him out, show a little more
- even tho he’a really pristine in general, in bed he’s messy, cumming on your face, your chest, your stomach — whatever he’s in the mood for
a/n: sooo I was thinking of Go Kyung-jun and just the whole class, realistically we don't know how long they were in the game but I'm guessing for a couple of months at least, so they were missing, fully. How shocking and heartbreaking would it be for the city to find out the whole class is missing, it would be huge. So what if Go Kyung-jun had a girlfriend outside of his class?
The first time Go Kyung-jun disappeared, it was an ordinary morning.
That was the part that ruined me later.
Not the phone call. Not the police station. Not the funeral with no body, no ashes, no proof, just a framed school photo on a wooden stand and a line of white chrysanthemums wilting beneath fluorescent lights.
It was the morning before all of it, the stupid, normal, careless morning I kept returning to like a loose tooth I couldn’t stop worrying with my tongue. The kind of morning no one respects because nothing in it announces itself as the last. The sky had been pale and thin, the kind of washed-out blue that made the apartment buildings look flat and tired. My uniform collar had been crooked. I remembered that because Kyung-jun had noticed it before I did, had clicked his tongue like I was personally embarrassing him, and reached over to fix it with fingers that were too rough for something so small.
“You go out looking like this?” he’d said, like he was disgusted, like his ears weren’t turning red because we were standing close enough for me to smell the mint gum on his breath.
I’d swatted his hand away even though he was already done. “You always act like you’re my stylist.”
“Someone has to. You dress like you lost a fight with your closet.”
“You dress like you bully mirrors.” He had laughed then, sudden and loud, head tipping back a little, sharp teeth flashing under the weak morning light. Kyung-jun always laughed like he expected the world to flinch from it. Like joy, for him, was another kind of threat.
Then he had walked backward down the sidewalk, hands shoved into his pockets, his schoolbag hanging off one shoulder, too big and too broad and too careless for the narrow street. He had smirked at me when I told him to hurry up before he was late.
“You worried about me?”
“No. I’m worried your teachers might finally realize you’re a lost cause.”
“Liar,” he’d said, pointing at me like he’d caught me doing something embarrassing. “You’re obsessed with me.”
I’d rolled my eyes. He’d grinned wider. And then he’d turned around. That was it. That was the last clean thing. The last version of him I had before the world split open.
By lunchtime, he wasn’t answering my texts. By the end of school, his phone went straight to voicemail. I told myself he was being annoying. I told myself he was probably sleeping through class, probably fighting with someone, probably doing that thing where he saw messages and decided responding too fast made him look pathetic, as if I didn’t already know exactly how pathetic he could be when no one else was watching. I sent him a voice message calling him an asshole. I sent three question marks. I called once, twice, five times, then stared at the screen until the letters of his name blurred into a dark little wound.
The call from his grandmother came at 7:42 p.m.
I remembered the time because I spent months staring at it in my call history until the phone replaced it with a date, and then I stared at that too, as if time itself had done something wrong by moving.
When I answered, her voice was not a voice at first. It was breath. A broken, shallow sound, like she’d been running though I knew her knees hurt too much for running, like she was holding the phone with both hands and still couldn’t keep it steady.
“Halmeoni?” I said, already standing. She said my name once. Just once. And everything inside me went quiet.
There are certain kinds of fear the body understands before the mind does. My hand tightened around the phone until the edges dug into my palm. I could hear the television playing in the living room behind me, some variety show with canned laughter bursting too brightly through the walls. Outside, someone’s scooter whined past the building. Somewhere, a dog barked and barked, sharp and ordinary, furious at nothing.
“What happened?” I asked.
She tried to answer. I heard her inhale. I heard the wet, trembling catch of her mouth opening and closing around words that would not come out right.
“Kyung-jun,” she said. My heart kicked once, hard enough to hurt.
“What about him?”
“He’s gone.”
For one stupid second, I thought she meant he had left the house. I thought she meant he had stormed out after an argument, that he had been rude, that he had slammed a door, that he had done what he always did when something pressed too close to the soft places he kept hidden. I almost felt relief. I almost said, I’ll call him. I almost said, He’ll come back.
Then she said, “His whole class.”
My fingers slipped on the phone. “What?”
“They’re gone. All of them,” she whispered, and then the whisper broke, and suddenly she sounded very old. Older than she had that morning. Older than she had ever sounded pouring me tea, scolding Kyung-jun for eating too fast, pretending not to notice when he sat too close to me at the table and stole fish from my bowl. “The school called. The police are there. No one knows—no one knows where they are.”
I do not remember getting my shoes on.
I remember the floor tilting. I remember my bedroom doorframe under my hand. I remember saying his name, not to her, not really, but into the apartment, into the air, into whatever part of the world had swallowed him. I remember my mother asking what was wrong from the kitchen and the way I could not look at her because looking at another living person would make it real. I remember my throat closing so tightly that my first sob came out silent, my whole chest convulsing around nothing.
Then sound returned all at once.
“No,” I said, and it was ugly. Small. Childish. “No, no, no, no, no.”
His grandmother was crying. I had heard her cry once before, softly, when Kyung-jun got into a fight so bad he came home with his cheek split and blood dried black beneath his nose. She’d cried in the kitchen where he couldn’t see, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist before turning around and yelling at him for being an idiot. That cry had been tired. Worried. Human.
This was different.
This was an animal sound trapped in an old woman’s body.
“I’m coming,” I said.
I don’t know how I got there so fast. I must have run the whole way because my lungs burned by the time I reached the building, and my legs felt strange under me, too light and too weak, like they belonged to someone who had already fallen. His grandmother opened the door before I knocked. Her hair was loose from its usual careful bun. One side of her cardigan had been buttoned wrong. She looked at me, and whatever strength she had been using to stay upright simply left her.
I caught her before she hit the floor.
For a moment we stood there in the doorway holding each other like two people caught in the same wave, her hands clutching the back of my hoodie, my face pressed into the powdery smell of her shoulder. She was crying into my hair. I was crying into her cardigan. Neither of us said his name, because his name had become a door we could not open without falling through.
Inside, the apartment looked exactly the same.
That was cruel too.
His shoes were still by the entrance, kicked sideways because he never put anything away properly unless his grandmother threatened to hit him with a slipper. His jacket hung on the back of the chair. A half-empty bottle of banana milk sat on the table, the straw still punched through the silver top. His grandmother had made stew. I could smell it on the stove, warm and rich and untouched, the scent filling the little apartment like an insult.
“What did they say?” I asked, wiping my face with my sleeve because my hands were shaking too badly to do it properly.
She told me what she knew. It was almost nothing.
The class had left school. The school said there had been a planned activity, but no one could confirm the location. The bus driver had been found unconscious at a rest stop with no memory after a certain point. Phones were dead. The GPS data stopped at the same time for everyone. No ransom. No accident reports. No bodies. No wreckage. Just an entire class folded out of the world like someone had taken scissors to the day and cut them cleanly from it.
His grandmother kept repeating, “He would have called me.”
And I kept saying, “I know.”
Because he would have.
He was careless with teachers and cruel with classmates and loud enough to make strangers turn around in restaurants, but he called his grandmother if he was going to be late. Not always politely. Sometimes it was just, “I’m not dead, stop nagging,” before hanging up. But he called.
He would have called me too.
Even if it was only to be annoying. Even if it was only to send a voice message saying, “Yah, why are you blowing up my phone like a psycho?” Even if he pretended not to like it. Even if he made me want to throw my phone at a wall.
He would have answered.
After a while, I went to his room.
His door creaked the same way it always did. His grandmother kept telling him to fix it, and he kept saying he would, and then he never did because Kyung-jun lived as if every tiny responsibility was a personal attack. The room smelled like him. Laundry detergent and cheap cologne and something warm beneath it, sweat and skin and the ghost of him pressed into the sheets. His desk was messy. Textbooks open and abandoned. A pen without its cap. A receipt from a convenience store crumpled beside his keyboard. His bed was unmade, blanket twisted from the morning, pillow dented where his head had been.
I stood there staring at it until the room blurred.
Then I crawled onto his bed and broke.
Not prettily. Not the kind of crying that belongs in dramas, with tears shining silently under soft lighting. I cried like my body was trying to reject the truth before it could settle inside me. My mouth opened around sounds I could not control. My fingers twisted in his blanket until the fabric burned my knuckles. I pressed my face into his pillow and breathed him in so hard it hurt, as if there might be enough left of him in the cotton to keep him real. As if he was hiding in the smell of his own bed. As if grief was a thing I could outsmart by refusing to lift my head.
At some point his grandmother came in. She did not tell me to stop. She sat on the edge of the mattress and touched my hair with trembling fingers.
“He loves you,” she whispered. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“He’s coming back,” I said into the pillow. The words were muffled. Wet. Desperate enough to humiliate me if anyone else had heard them. His grandmother’s hand stilled.
Then she said, very quietly, “Yes.” But she did not sound like she believed it.
Six months later, the police asked the families to hold funerals.
They did not use the word ask at first. They dressed it up in gentle voices and official phrases, grief counseling language and practical advice, all those careful, padded words adults use when they have run out of answers and want their failure to sound kind. They said the investigation would remain open. They said search efforts would continue if new evidence appeared. They said absence of bodies did not erase hope, but the human mind needed ritual, closure, a place to mourn.
Closure.
I hated that word so much I felt it in my teeth.
The funeral hall smelled like flowers and polished wood and too many people breathing in one room. Every missing student had a framed photograph. Every photo had a black ribbon in the corner. Kyung-jun’s picture was one from school, his tie slightly loose, his expression caught somewhere between bored and irritated. He looked like he might step out of the frame just to complain about how ugly the photo was.
I stood in front of it for a long time.
People moved around me in dark clothes. Mothers collapsed against fathers. Fathers stared at the floor with red eyes and clenched jaws. Someone wailed from the far end of the hall, a raw sound that rose and fell until it became part of the air. The classmates’ younger siblings stood confused and frightened at the edges, dressed in black too big for them, holding white flowers they didn’t know what to do with.
Kyung-jun’s grandmother held my hand so tightly my fingers went numb.
I did not cry at first.
I couldn’t.
I stared at his face until the edges of the photograph sharpened unnaturally, until I could see the tiny strand of hair falling near his eyebrow, the slight curl of his mouth like he was about to say something mean. I kept thinking, he would hate this. He would hate the flowers. He would hate the crying. He would hate people looking at him like he was something sad and finished. He would lean down to me and mutter, “Why does everyone look so ugly when they cry?” and I would hit his arm and he would grin because he got the reaction he wanted.
Someone guided me closer with the incense.
I looked at the portrait.
My knees gave out.
It happened so suddenly that I didn’t feel myself falling until hands caught me under the arms. The sound that came out of me did not feel like mine. It was too loud. Too torn open. It scraped through my throat and filled the funeral hall, and I hated myself for it because Kyung-jun would have teased me, would have called me dramatic, would have said, “Yah, you trying to make my funeral about you?”
And then I cried harder because for one second I heard his voice so clearly I turned my head, looking for him. There was no one there.
After that, time became something I survived rather than lived in.
I graduated.
People said that like it meant something. Like walking across a stage and receiving a paper could close the year behind me. Like the world had not kept moving with a hole in it. I packed my things for university in the city and found one of his hoodies at the back of my closet, black, oversized, the sleeves stretched because he always yanked them over his hands when he was bored. I sat on the floor holding it for almost an hour. It barely smelled like him anymore.
That was the day I understood why people begged ghosts to haunt them.
For a while, I went to his grandmother’s every weekend. Then every other weekend. Then when classes got heavy, once a month. She never blamed me. She said I had to live. She said Kyung-jun would be angry if I didn’t.
“He’d say something awful,” she told me once, pouring tea with hands that had grown thinner. I smiled because she was right.
He would have called me stupid for crying. Then he would have sat beside me and nudged my knee with his until I leaned into him. He never knew what to do with softness when anyone could see it. He acted like tenderness was something embarrassing that happened to other people. But in private, when his room was dim and the city lights cut pale lines across the walls, he would hook a finger through mine and pretend it was nothing. He would rest his chin on top of my head and complain that I was heavy even though he was the one pulling me closer.
A year passed.
Then more.
His case became one of those strange tragedies people talked about in low voices when documentaries needed content. The missing class. The impossible disappearance. The cold case with no bodies and no ransom and no answers. Sometimes people at university brought it up without knowing I had loved one of the boys in the photos. I learned to sit very still when they did. I learned how to hold a pen without breaking it. I learned how to say, “Yeah, I heard about that,” in a voice calm enough to pass as indifference.
But at night, I still checked.
News articles. Police updates. Forums filled with theories so cruel and stupid I wanted to reach through the screen and shake strangers by the throat. I checked unidentified patient lists once. I checked hospitals after disasters. I checked because hope had become ugly inside me, not bright, not pretty, but stubborn and half-starved, dragging itself across every empty day with bloody hands.
I did not believe he was alive in the way happy people believe things. I believed because the alternative was a room I could not enter.
The day I saw him again, it was raining.
Not hard. Just enough to turn the sidewalks dark and make the city smell like wet pavement and exhaust, the kind of cold spring rain that clung to hair and lashes. I had left class early because the lecture hall felt too tight, too full of other people’s bodies and pencil scratches and bright laptop screens. My head hurt. My coat was thin. I stopped outside a convenience store to buy an umbrella I didn’t need, mostly because I wanted something to hold.
The bell above the door chimed when I stepped out. Across the street, an old woman stood beneath the awning of a pharmacy.
For a moment, I noticed only her. Small frame. Gray cardigan. Plastic bag hooked over one wrist. Hair pulled back in a careful bun. My body recognized her before my mind did.
Kyung-jun’s grandmother.
Everything inside me went quiet in that same terrible way it had when she called.
She looked older. Smaller. The rain made the sidewalk shimmer between us, headlights dragging long ribbons of white and red across the wet road. People passed in both directions, umbrellas bobbing like dark flowers. A bus groaned at the curb. Someone laughed behind me, bright and careless.
Then someone stepped out of the pharmacy behind her.
Tall.
Too tall.
Black hair damp at the edges. Shoulders broad under a dark jacket. One hand holding the door, the other wrapped around the strap of a bag like he was still learning how to use his own fingers. His face was thinner than it used to be. Sharper. The lines of it cut deeper, cheekbones more pronounced, jaw tight in a way that looked less like arrogance now and more like something wired beneath the skin. There was a pale mark near his temple. Another at his throat, half-hidden by his collar. His mouth was the same.
That was what destroyed me.
Not the height. Not the shoulders. Not even the eyes.
His mouth.
The same mouth that had smirked at me under the weak morning sun. The same mouth that had called me a liar, a brat, a psycho, pretty when he thought I was asleep and couldn’t hear him. The same mouth I had kissed in stairwells and behind school buildings and once in his grandmother’s kitchen when he was supposed to be taking out the trash.
It opened slightly.
He saw me.
The city stopped making sense.
For a second, neither of us moved.
His grandmother turned, following his stare, and the plastic bag slipped from her hand. Oranges rolled across the wet pavement, bright and absurd, one bumping against the curb and stopping there like the world had chosen that tiny detail to prove it was still real.
Kyung-jun stared at me as if I was the ghost.
His eyes were darker than I remembered. Not in color. In depth. Like something had been carved behind them and left open. The boy I loved used to look at the world like he could beat it into giving him what he wanted. This boy looked at me like he had crawled through hell and found my face at the exit, and now he was afraid that if he blinked, the devil would laugh and take me back.
I stepped off the curb without looking. A car horn screamed. Someone grabbed my sleeve and cursed, but I tore free, because the only thing my body knew was his name. It broke out of me before I reached him, loud enough that people turned.
“Kyung-jun!”
His whole face collapsed.
His jaw trembled once, hard, like he hated it. His eyes went wet so fast it looked painful. He took one step toward me, then another, and then I was running, shoes splashing through shallow puddles, rain needling my face, breath tearing out of my lungs in broken pieces.
He caught me so hard it hurt.
His arms came around me like a lock. One beneath my shoulders, one around my waist, lifting me off the ground with a rough sound punched from his chest. I hit him and held on. My hands clawed at the back of his jacket, bunching the fabric in my fists, searching for proof under layers of cloth and rain and impossible time. He was solid. Warm. Shaking. His hair brushed my cheek. His breath struck the side of my neck, ragged and uneven, and then his face was buried there, pressed so hard against me it felt like he was trying to disappear into my skin.
“You’re here,” I sobbed. His fingers dug into my back. “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here—”
“Shut up,” he said, but the words broke in the middle.
I cried harder.
His body jerked around a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob, ugly and strangled and nothing like the boy who used to laugh like a weapon. He set me down but didn’t let me go. His hands came up to my face, rough palms cupping my cheeks, thumbs dragging beneath my eyes as if tears offended him personally. He looked at me with a kind of panic I had never seen on him before, not even in old fights, not even when blood ran from his nose and he grinned through it because losing scared him less than being seen as weak.
Now he looked terrified.
His eyes moved over my face too quickly. Forehead, mouth, jaw, hair, eyes again. Like he was counting pieces. Like he had to make sure time had not taken anything from him. His thumb caught on my lower lip. He swallowed.
“Yah,” he whispered. “Why are you crying so ugly?”
A laugh tore out of me, half-sob, half-hurt.
I hit his chest with both hands.
It should have been harder. I meant for it to be harder. But the second my palms struck him, I felt bone beneath jacket, the unfamiliar sharpness of him, and my hands curled instead. His chest rose under my fingers. He was real. He was breathing. He was looking at me with rain caught in his lashes and tears sliding down his face like he was furious at them for existing.
“You died,” I said, voice splitting. “You died. They had a funeral. I had to stand there and look at your picture. I had to—”
His mouth twisted.
“I didn’t die.”
“You were gone.”
“I know.”
“You were gone.”
“I know.”
His voice snapped on the second one, not at me, not really, but because something inside him could not stand the words either. His hands slid from my face to the back of my head, fingers tangling in my rain-damp hair with no gentleness left. Not hurting. Holding. Possessive in a way that would have made me shove him before, would have made me tell him I wasn’t something he owned.
But his hands were shaking. He pressed his forehead to mine. His breath came hot against my mouth. “I tried,” he said.
The rain kept falling.
“What?”
His eyes shut. For one second, his face changed completely. The street vanished from him. The pharmacy. His grandmother. Me. He was somewhere else. Somewhere bright and cruel and endless.
“I tried to come back,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it under the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. “Every time.”
Every time.
The words dropped between us like something with teeth.
I wanted to ask. I wanted to know. I wanted to peel the truth out of him with my bare hands and also never hear a single word of it. Because whatever had happened to him lived in his face now. It lived in the way he flinched when a car horn blared again. It lived in the way his hands tightened on me when someone brushed past too close. It lived in the hollow under his cheekbones, in the swollen exhaustion around his eyes, in the strange, feral stillness of his shoulders.
Kyung-jun had always been restless. Always moving, tapping, leaning, shoving, laughing, picking fights with the air if no one else volunteered.
Now he was too still.
Like if he moved wrong, something would start over.
His grandmother was crying behind him. Quietly at first, then not quietly at all. I looked over his shoulder and saw her with one hand over her mouth, eyes fixed on us, the abandoned oranges bright around her feet. She looked like someone watching the dead return and not trusting God enough to thank him yet.
Kyung-jun noticed me looking and turned his head slightly.
“Halmeoni,” he muttered, voice rough. “Stop crying. People are staring.” She made a choked sound that might have been a laugh if grief had not ruined it.
“You awful boy,” she sobbed. “You awful, awful boy.”
His mouth trembled.
Then his face hardened like he hated that too, hated being seen, hated that his grandmother’s love could touch him where everyone could watch. He pulled me against his side without asking, one arm clamping around my shoulders, his palm spread wide over my upper arm like he had no intention of letting the city test him. He bent, picked up the bag with his free hand, then snapped at a man who had stopped too obviously nearby.
“What are you looking at?” The man looked away immediately. I almost cried again because that was him. That was my Kyung-jun, cracked down the middle and still somehow capable of being an asshole to strangers.
His grandmother wiped her face with a trembling hand. “We should go home.”
Kyung-jun did not answer right away.
His arm tightened around me.
I felt it before he said anything. The conflict running through him, sharp and silent. Grandmother. Me. Home. Hospital appointments, police questions, recovery, missing years, a life that had apparently returned without asking him if he knew how to live in it. His jaw worked once. His eyes flicked down to me.
I knew that look.
Not exactly. Not anymore. But enough.
He was asking without asking, because asking made him vulnerable and Kyung-jun would rather swallow glass than sound like he needed anything.
“You can come with me,” I said. His grandmother looked at me. Then at him.
Kyung-jun’s face closed too fast. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You never do.” His eyes flashed, and for one second, beneath the trauma, beneath the rain, beneath the impossible years between us, the old irritation sparked alive.
“Still annoying,” he said.
My throat tightened around something almost like a smile.
“Still ugly when you lie.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
The air changed.
It was not soft. Nothing about him was soft right then except the way his hand moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck, fingers sliding under my hair, warm against rain-chilled skin. His eyes held there, on my mouth, like he had dreamed of it so often the real thing had become dangerous. Like touching me had already ruined him and kissing me might finish it.
“Kyung-jun, go with Y/N, call me when you want to come home” his grandmother said gently.
He blinked, jaw flexing but nodding. Then he looked back at me.
“You still live in the city?”
I nodded.
“Alone?”
I nodded again.
His expression sharpened immediately. “Of course you do. Stupid.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You’ve been missing for two years and you’re already insulting my life choices?”
“You made bad ones while I was gone. Not my fault.”
I stared at him through tears. His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not quite. More like the ghost of one pressing against a bruise. Then his face crumpled again, so quickly that I barely saw it before he pulled me in and kissed me.
The first touch was not careful. It was desperate enough to frighten both of us.
His mouth found mine with a sound that disappeared into my breath, and for a second there was no street, no rain, no grandmother pretending not to cry while watching us like her heart was being torn apart and stitched back together in the same moment. There was only him. His hand at the back of my neck. His other arm locked around my waist. His mouth hot and trembling against mine, tasting like rain and salt and something ruined. He kissed like someone proving a point to the dead. Like he had argued with the universe for two years and finally gotten his hands on the evidence.
I cried into it.
I couldn’t help it. Tears slipped between our mouths, wetting his upper lip, and he made a low, broken sound that would have embarrassed him if he had been whole enough to care. He pulled back just enough to breathe, forehead still pressed to mine.
“Don’t,” he rasped. I shook my head, unable to stop. “Don’t cry like that,” he said, but his own voice shook so badly the command fell apart. His thumb dragged over my cheek again, rougher now, almost angry. “You think I can handle that right now?”
A laugh scraped out of me. “Sorry my crying is inconvenient for you.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
His eyes closed. For the first time, he smiled. Small. Real. Devastating.
“I missed you too.”
My apartment looked different with him inside it.
That was the first thing I noticed when I unlocked the door hours later, after his grandmother made us come back so she could feed him first, after she pressed food on me too with shaking hands and watched Kyung-jun eat like every bite was proof, after police called twice and he ignored the second call until his grandmother slapped his arm and told him not to be rude to detectives. After he packed nothing because he had nothing from before except the clothes he’d come back in and a phone the police had given him that he kept staring at like it belonged to someone else.
He stepped into my place and made it smaller.
He had always done that. Taken up too much space. Filled rooms with shoulders and noise and bad attitude. But now there was a strange caution to him, a pause at the entrance as his eyes moved over everything: the narrow hallway, the shoe rack, the kitchen light I had left on, the stack of textbooks on the table, the blanket folded over the couch. His gaze snagged on ordinary objects like he expected them to change while he wasn’t looking.
I closed the door behind us. The click made him flinch. Only slightly but I saw it.
His head turned fast, eyes cutting to the lock, shoulders rising before he forced them down. The movement was so controlled it hurt worse than if he had jumped. Kyung-jun, who used to slam doors just to make people look at him. Kyung-jun, who used to grin when someone startled. Kyung-jun, who used to fill silence before silence could make him think.
I pretended not to notice.
“You can shower,” I said quietly. “I have towels. Clothes might be—”
“I’m not showering.”
I looked at him. His mouth set. I understood too slowly, then all at once.
He did not want a closed bathroom door between us. He did not want water loud enough to hide sounds. He did not want to be alone in a room with steam on the mirror and no way to see what was coming.
“Okay,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you feel bad for me.” I held his stare for a second.
Then I kicked off my shoes and walked past him. “Fine. Stay dirty.”
His brows twitched.
There. A spark.
“Yah.”
“What?”
“You got mean.”
I put my keys on the counter. “You were gone for two years. I had to develop a personality.”
“You already had one. It was bad.”
I turned around.
He was still by the door, hands hanging at his sides, looking too large and too lost for the little entranceway. The overhead light carved shadows beneath his cheekbones. His hair had dried messily, falling over his forehead in dark pieces. Without rain between us, without the shock of the street, the changes in him were harder to ignore. He was thinner than before, stripped down to sharper edges. His wrists looked too bony where his sleeves rode up. There were marks near the inside of one elbow. Medical. Old bruising faded yellow-green under the skin. His lips were dry from biting.
My throat tightened. He saw me looking. Of course he did.
“What?” he snapped.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” The word landed between us differently than it had that last morning.
You’re worried about me?
No.
Liar.
I looked away first because if I didn’t, I would cry again, and he had already told me he couldn’t handle it. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water. My hands felt strange around the cup, clumsy and too careful. Behind me, I heard him move at last. Slow footsteps. Then nothing. When I turned back, he was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the wall near my desk.
At the photo. I had forgotten it was there.
It was small, tucked into the corner of the mirror, half-hidden behind a postcard and an old university schedule. A picture from before. One of the only ones I had printed. Kyung-jun in his school uniform, scowling at the camera because I’d taken it without warning, one hand reaching toward the lens like he was about to snatch my phone. Behind the fake annoyance, there was a smile beginning in his eyes.
He stared at it for so long the glass nearly slipped from my hand.
“That’s ugly,” he said. His voice was flat. I walked over and held the water out. He didn’t take it.
“Take the water.”
“I said it’s ugly.”
“I heard you.”
“Why’d you keep it?” The question was too sharp. Too defensive. He still wasn’t looking at me. I lowered the glass slightly.
Because it was the only thing I had that looked alive, I thought. Because after the funeral, every official photo made you look dead. Because sometimes I woke up and couldn’t remember your voice right away, but I could look at that picture and remember the exact insult you threw at me after I took it. Because forgetting one tiny thing about you felt like killing you myself.
I said none of that.
“You owed me money,” I said instead. His head turned. I shrugged. “I needed evidence.” For half a second, he only stared. Then the sound that came out of him was almost a laugh.
It broke before it could become one. His mouth twisted, his eyes shining too bright again, and he turned away like I had done something unfair by making him feel a normal thing. His hand came up, rubbing roughly over his face.
“Fuck,” he muttered. I stepped closer. He tensed.
I stopped.
The space between us suddenly felt alive. Full of everything we had not been able to say across two years and whatever nightmare had held him. Full of every unanswered call, every birthday he missed, every night I fell asleep with his hoodie twisted in my hands. Full of every time he must have woken inside that game and realized it had started again. Full of the fact that I had mourned him in black while he was somewhere dying in ways I could not imagine.
“What happened?” I asked.
He went very still.
The apartment changed with the question.
The refrigerator hummed. Rain ticked against the window. Somewhere upstairs, a chair scraped across the floor. Ordinary sounds, thin and harmless, gathering around us as if they too were waiting.
Kyung-jun’s hand dropped from his face.
For a while, he said nothing.
Then he walked past me to the couch and sat down heavily, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The posture did not suit him. Kyung-jun sprawled. Kyung-jun took space. Kyung-jun leaned back like the world had been built for his comfort. Seeing him folded forward like that made something cold slide beneath my ribs.
I sat beside him, close enough that our knees touched. He looked at the contact. Then at me. His knee pressed harder into mine.
“We didn’t go to some class trip” he said.
“I know.” His eyes flicked up. “The police said the trip records were fake,” I said. “Or planted. Or something. They never explained it clearly.”
He scoffed. The sound was automatic, bitter. “Of course they didn’t.”
“What happened?” His hands clasped between his knees. His fingers tightened until the knuckles went pale.
“You won’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. “Always so confident.”
“Kyung-jun.” The way I said his name made him look at me, like the sound of his name in my mouth pulled something in him loose.
His gaze dropped again, this time to my hands. They were folded in my lap, gripping each other too tightly. After a second, he reached over and pried them apart with rough fingers. Not gentle, exactly. Kyung-jun had never been good at gentle in a way that looked clean from the outside. He hooked his hand around mine and held on. Hard.
“There was a game,” he said. The room seemed to tilt. “Some fucking game we used to play in high school. Not like—” He stopped, jaw flexing, and let out a humorless little breath. “Not some phone game. Not a joke. We woke up in a youth center. It looked real. Felt real. People died.”
His thumb dug into the back of my hand.
“They died, there was a winning team, and then it started again.”
I did not move. I barely breathed. He kept staring at our hands as if my fingers were the only reason the room was still here.
“At first we thought… I don’t know what the fuck we thought. We didn't remember we had played it over and over until they pulled us out. Bodies started dropping and everyone started acting like animals, and every time we got close to figuring something out, it reset.” His voice thickened. He swallowed hard. “You die in there, you feel it.”
My stomach turned.
“You died?” His silence answered before he did. He laughed once. It was horrible.
“Many times.”
The air left me. He looked at me then, eyes sharp with something almost angry, like my fear hurt him and he wanted to punish the room for making me show it.
“Don’t look like that.”
“How am I supposed to look?”
“Not like that.”
“Kyung-jun—”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he snapped. The words cracked through the apartment. I flinched. He saw. His face changed. The anger vanished so quickly it frightened me, leaving something raw and young underneath. He let go of my hand as if he had burned me.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I didn’t—”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” His jaw clenched. He stared at the floor. “Don’t say that when it’s not.”
I swallowed.
That sounded like him too. Mean little mouth. Brutal honesty when softness would have been easier. But beneath it, something had shifted. Before, he snapped because he wanted control. Now he snapped because control was all he had left, and even that kept slipping.
I reached for him slowly this time, giving him space to pull away. He watched my hand like it was dangerous. When my fingers touched his wrist, his eyes shut. Just once. Briefly. But the breath that left him shook.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered. His hand turned under mine, fast, catching my fingers before I could move away.
“I thought you forgot me.” The words were so quiet I almost didn’t understand them. Something inside me tore open all over again.
He looked furious at himself the second they were out, eyes flashing, mouth hardening like he wanted to shove the sentence back down his own throat. But it was too late. It sat between us. Small and naked and bleeding.
“You thought what?”
He stood abruptly.
I startled, looking up as he paced two steps away, then back, then stopped because there wasn’t enough room in my apartment for whatever was moving through him. His hands went to his hair, pushing it back from his face.
“It was two years,” he said. “I don’t know. In there, time was fucked. Sometimes it felt like days. Sometimes forever. Every time it started again, I remembered less at first. Faces got blurry. Voices got—” He cut himself off. His throat worked. “I kept trying to remember yours.”
My eyes burned.
He turned on me suddenly, pointing like he was accusing me of something.
“Your laugh was annoying as hell. That helped.”
A broken sound slipped out of me.
“And your face,” he continued, voice roughening around every word, “because you always looked at me like you wanted to hit me.”
“I usually did.”
“Yeah. I know.” His mouth twitched, then trembled. “I kept thinking, if I forgot that, I’d really die.”
I stood. He watched me, breathing harder now, shoulders rising and falling beneath his jacket. I crossed the little space between us. For once, he did not make a joke. For once, he did not move first.
I reached up and touched his face.
His skin was warm. Real. Slightly rough beneath my palm. A tiny muscle jumped in his jaw. His eyes stayed on mine with a desperation so intense it felt less like looking and more like being held down by it. The old Kyung-jun would have smirked. He would have said something filthy or stupid or mean to cut the tension before it could cut him.
This one only stood there and let me touch him like he needed it more than pride.
“I didn’t forget you,” I said. His lips parted. “I tried,” I whispered, and that hurt him; I saw it land. “Not because I wanted to. Because everyone kept telling me I had to live. They said I had to move on. They said I was young, that you’d want me to be happy.”
His eyes darkened.
“I would not say that.”
I let out a watery laugh. “No. You’d say something awful.”
“I’d say if you got some ugly boyfriend while I was gone, I’d haunt you.”
“There were no boyfriends.” His whole face changed. The relief was so fast, so violent, that he looked away from me as if I had caught him doing something obscene.
I should have teased him.
Before, I would have. I would have laughed and said, What, were you worried? I would have poked at him until he snapped, because that was how we loved each other then, with teeth and stupid little wounds neither of us meant to make deep.
But now I only watched the tendons in his neck shift as he swallowed.
“No one,” I said. His gaze came back slowly. “I couldn’t,” I admitted. “Not when I still—”
The word love hovered at the back of my throat, too bright, too enormous for the small room. Kyung-jun stepped into me before I could finish.
His arms went around me with a force that stole my breath. He bent over me, face pressing into my hair, one hand splayed between my shoulder blades, the other locked low at my waist. He held me like the world had already taken me once and he was not stupid enough to trust it again. His body was shaking. I felt it everywhere we touched. A tremor running beneath muscle and bone, down his arms, through his hands, into me.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. It came out harsh. Almost like a threat. My cheek pressed against his chest. His heart beat too fast under my ear.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” His hand tightened. “You don’t. You go to class, I’m going with you. You go buy water, I’m going. You go to the bathroom—”
I pulled back enough to look up at him. “Absolutely not.”
His eyes were wet again, but his mouth curled. “Why? Shy now?”
“You’re insane.”
“Yeah,” he said, and the smile vanished. “Probably.”
The honesty hit harder than any joke.
His gaze moved over my face, slower now, not counting pieces this time but memorizing them. There was hunger in it, yes, but not simple hunger. Not the easy, cocky kind he used to wear when he wanted me to blush. This was deeper. Worse. A need scraped raw by terror. He looked at my mouth like he had imagined it in the dark. Like he had survived on memory until memory wasn’t enough, and now that I was here, breathing in front of him, his body didn’t know how to be anything but starving.
“Kyung-jun,” I whispered.
“What.”
“You need sleep.”
He gave me a look. “Wow. Romantic.”
“You look like you’re about to collapse.”
“I’m fine.” I stared at him. He stared back. Then his jaw tightened. “I said I’m fine.”
The room filled with all the things that sentence could not hide. The dark crescents beneath his eyes. The way he stood too close to me and still looked afraid the distance might grow. The way he kept glancing at the door even though he had checked the lock twice. The way his fingers flexed whenever there was a sound in the hallway.
“You don’t have to be,” I said.
His expression went cold so fast it was almost impressive.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m saying you can sleep here.”
“Obviously.”
“On the couch.”
His face offended itself.
“The couch?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the couch, then back at me as if I had personally betrayed him. “After two years, you’re putting me on the couch?”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. His eyes caught on it. The anger in his face fell fast. For a second, he just stared, and the room softened around the edges.
“What?” I asked, wiping under my eye. His mouth pressed into a line.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” He looked away, but not fast enough. Color had risen faintly along his cheekbones. I touched his sleeve. “What?”
“Your laugh,” he muttered. My chest hurt. He still wouldn’t look at me. “Still annoying,” he added, weaker, voice shaking slightly.
I stepped closer and wrapped my arms around his middle. He let me. More than let me. His body folded around mine almost instantly, chin dropping to the top of my head, hands finding my back again. He exhaled like he had been holding his breath since the street, since the game, since the first time he woke up and realized dying had not freed him.
“We can share the bed,” I said into his shirt. “But only sleeping.”
“Who said I was thinking anything else?” I tilted my head back to look at him. His brows lifted, almost like before. Almost. “What?” he said. “You think I’m some kind of pervert?”
“I think you’re you.”
“Exactly. So, yes.” I shoved his chest. He caught my wrist and pulled it back around him.
“No,” he said. The word was quiet. My breath caught. He looked down at where my hand rested against him, fingers curled in his shirt. “Don’t move away yet.”
There was no joke after it. No smirk. No insult to cover the soft underbelly of the request. So I didn’t move.
I stood there in the middle of my apartment, wrapped around the boy I had buried without a body, feeling his heart slam beneath my palm as if it was trying to make up for every beat I had missed. Outside, the rain kept threading silver down the window. The city moved on unaware, cars passing, people laughing under umbrellas, neon signs bleeding color into puddles. Somewhere in that same city, police reports were being written. Families were being called. A whole class was being returned to a world that had already mourned them and moved their desks and packed away their uniforms.
But inside my apartment, time narrowed to the shape of his hands.
After a while, he let me lead him to the bedroom. He hesitated in the doorway. I felt it through his hand before I saw it. The slight resistance. The way his fingers locked around mine.
“It’s just my room,” I said.
His eyes swept over the bed, the window, the closet, the lamp, every shadowed corner. “I know.”
“You can leave the door open.”
His mouth tightened. “I’m not scared.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
He glared at me, but it was ruined by exhaustion. “Stop agreeing with me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some injured dog you found in an alley.” My eyes moved over him before I could stop them. The bruises. The scars. The hollowed exhaustion. The boy still standing because falling would mean trusting the floor. His gaze sharpened.
“Don’t,” he warned.
I looked back at his face. “Okay.”
He waited, suspicious. I squeezed his hand once and turned down the blanket. He watched like the bed might bite. Then, very suddenly, he said, “I want to marry you.”
My hands froze on the blanket. The silence afterward was enormous. I turned around slowly.
Kyung-jun stood in the doorway with his shoulders tense and his chin lifted, defensive already, like he had thrown a punch and was waiting for one back. His face was serious in a way that made my stomach drop. No teasing curve to his mouth. No theatrical arrogance. Just those dark, damaged eyes fixed on me with too much certainty for the soft yellow light of my bedroom.
“What?” I whispered.
“I said I want to marry you.” My heart lurched so hard it was almost pain.
“You just came back from being kidnapped and tortured.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“Kyung-jun.”
“What?” His voice rose, sharp with embarrassment now, with fear disguised badly as irritation. “You want me to wait? For what? So some counselor can tell me my feelings are a trauma response? So people can say I’m unstable? I already know I’m fucked up. Congratulations. Still want to marry you.”
I stared at him.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, angry at himself, at me, at the room, at whatever had made the words come out before he could dress them in cruelty.
“I’m not saying tomorrow,” he muttered.
“That’s surprisingly reasonable.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
I looked down at the floor, my vision blurring, my heart thumping so loud I'm surprised he hasn't complained about it yet. “I’m just...trying not to cry.” That shut him up. His face shifted again, the anger breaking at the edges.
I stepped toward him carefully. He did not step back. When I reached him, I touched the front of his jacket, smoothing nothing, fixing nothing, just laying my hands there because I could. Because once, for two years, I had only been able to touch cotton that no longer smelled like him.
“You can want that,” I said. His throat moved. “Cause I want it too. But you also need to heal.” His expression hardened. I held his jacket tighter before he could pull away. “And I’m not saying that because I don’t want you. I’m saying it because I do. I want you alive. Actually alive. Not just back.”
The words hit him somewhere deep. His eyes lowered. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, in a voice so low I felt it more than heard it, he said, “I don’t know how.” I closed my eyes. There it was.
The thing under everything. Under the jokes. Under the snapping. Under the possessive hands and the marriage demand and the way he kept looking at me like I was the last piece of shore after a shipwreck.
I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He bent immediately, face dropping to my shoulder.
“We’ll figure it out,” I whispered.
His laugh was bitter against my skin. “That sounds stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“Like something people say when they don’t know shit.”
“Probably.” His arms tightened around me.
“Say it again.” My eyes burned.
“We’ll figure it out.”
His breath shook. Again, I thought he might say. Again, like a boy asking for one more story before sleep. But he only held me, silent and trembling, until the worst of it passed through him.
When we finally lay down, he didn’t take off his jacket at first. He lay on top of the blanket, stiff as a corpse, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. I lay beside him in the dim light, listening to the rain soften against the glass. The space between us was only a few inches, but it felt cruel.
“You can come closer,” I said.
“I know.”
He didn’t move.
I turned on my side. His profile was sharp in the dark, lashes lowered but not closed, mouth tense. He looked like he was bracing for something. A vote. A scream. A body hitting the floor. The start of another loop.
I reached out and touched his hand. His fingers closed around mine so fast it hurt.
“Sorry,” he muttered immediately, loosening his grip by force.
“It’s okay.”
He turned his head toward me. “Stop saying that.”
“Then stop apologizing.”
“I didn’t apologize.”
“You literally just did.”
“No, I didn’t.” I smiled despite everything. His gaze dropped to it. The room stilled again.
Slowly, as if sudden movement might shatter whatever fragile thing had survived between us, he turned onto his side. His hand came up, hovering near my face. Waiting. That, more than anything, made my chest ache. Kyung-jun had never hovered. He took, grabbed, pulled, crowded. He tested the world with his hands and dared it to complain.
Now he waited. I leaned into his palm. His breath caught.
There was something unbearable about being touched by him after so long. Not because it was new, but because it was familiar in a way my body had almost convinced itself it invented. The rough pad of his thumb beneath my cheekbone. The warmth of his palm. The faint tremor he could not quite hide. His eyes kept moving over me, over and over, like he was afraid sleep would steal the details.
“I used to think about this,” he said.
My throat tightened. “About my bed?”
“Don’t ruin it.” I almost laughed. He brushed his thumb across my cheek. “About your face. Your voice. Stupid things.” His mouth twisted. “You yelling at me. You pretending you weren’t jealous. You getting mad when I bought you coffee because I said your taste was childish.”
“You said only babies drink sweet coffee.”
“You did drink sweet coffee.”
“I still do.”
He stared at me.
Then, very softly, “Good.”
The word broke me more than it should have.
Because it meant I had stayed real in some tiny way. Because it meant the world had not taken every version of us. Because sweet coffee, crooked collars, ugly crying, stupid insults — they had survived too, buried under horror, waiting for him to come back and be cruel about them.
His hand slid to the back of my neck.
“Come here,” he said. It was not really an order. I moved closer anyway.
He pulled me into him, under the blanket this time, his body curling around mine with desperate heat. He was bigger than I remembered. Or maybe I had made him smaller in grief so I could survive the size of missing him. His chest pressed against my back, knees behind mine, arm locked across my waist. His breath stirred the hair near my ear. The whole bed seemed to hold its breath with us.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then, barely audible, he said, “I thought I’d never do this again.” My fingers covered his hand on my stomach. He turned his palm upward and tangled our fingers together.
“I’m here,” I whispered. His forehead pressed to the back of my neck.
“Yeah,” he said. A minute passed. Then another. His breathing did not slow. I knew he was afraid to sleep.
Maybe he knew I knew, because his hand tightened once, warning me not to say it. So I didn’t. I lay there in the dark with his body wrapped around mine and let silence do what words would ruin. The city lights shone through the curtains in thin silver lines. Rainwater tracked down the window like veins. His heart beat against my back, too fast, too alive, and every time it stumbled into a harder rhythm, I squeezed his hand until it steadied.
Sometime, when my eyes began to shut slowly, his mouth brushed the nape of my neck. Not a kiss, not quite. A touch. A check. A prayer he would deny making.
“You better not disappear,” he murmured, voice thick with exhaustion. My eyes filled again. I turned carefully in his arms.
He resisted for half a second, then let me face him. His eyes were half-lidded, dark and ruined and still so painfully him that I could barely stand it. I touched his cheek. He leaned into it before he could stop himself.
“You disappeared first,” I whispered.
His mouth twitched faintly.
“Yeah,” he said. “My bad.” A laugh broke out of me, quiet and wet. His eyes softened. Then he kissed me again. This one was slower.
Not less desperate. Never that. The desperation was still there, threaded through his fingers in my hair, in the way his body shifted closer, in the way he breathed against my mouth like every inhale had to pass through me first. But there was something else under it now. Recognition. Grief. The ache of two people touching across the grave everyone else had already built.
He kissed me like he was tired of dying. Like he was angry he had lost time. Like he loved me so much it had nowhere clean to go, so it came out in trembling hands and bitten-back sounds and his forehead pressed to mine afterward, his eyes shut tight.
By four in the morning, the room has stopped pretending to be night and has not yet become morning.
It is that strange, thin hour where the dark turns gray at the edges, where everything feels suspended and unclaimed, where the city outside my window has gone quiet enough that I can hear the building breathing around us. Pipes knock faintly behind the walls. Rainwater gathers at the window ledge and drops in uneven little taps against the metal frame. Somewhere far below, a car passes through the wet street with a soft hiss, tires dragging through puddles, then fades until there is nothing left but the low electric hum of the refrigerator and Kyung-jun’s breathing beside me.
Not sleeping. He has been lying beside me for hours with his eyes open. I know because I have been awake for all of it.
At first, I pretend not to notice. I lie still beneath the blanket with my hand trapped in his, my fingers numb from how tightly he keeps remembering I am there. Every few minutes, his grip changes. Not loosening exactly. Testing. His thumb presses into my knuckles, then slides over them as if counting. His palm warms mine, then tightens again like something inside him startles awake without warning. Once, when the pipes groan too loudly in the wall, his whole body goes rigid beside me, the muscles in his arm locking so suddenly that my wrist aches. He does not move after. Does not speak. Does not explain. He just stares at the ceiling as if something has written instructions there in the dark.
I watch him through half-lowered lashes.
His face looks worse in the almost-morning. The shadows are gentler, but somehow less forgiving. In the yellow lamp glow, he looked wounded. In this hour, he looks haunted. Like whatever brought him back forgot to return all of him. His hair is messy against my pillow, black strands falling over his forehead, and his eyes keep fixed upward, dry and too dark, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion. His mouth is slightly parted. Not soft. Not relaxed. Ready. As if breath itself is something he might need to fight for.
Every now and then, he blinks too fast. Like he is trying not to see something. Or trying not to sleep because sleep is where it waits. I understand it slowly. Not as a thought at first, but as a coldness spreading beneath my ribs. The game had nights.
The dying would not have waited politely for daylight. The fear would not have given them neat hours to survive in. There must have been dark rooms and locked doors and hallways too silent to trust, clocks crawling toward whatever time meant death, classmates whispering and accusing and waiting for the announcement that would ruin someone. There must have been the terrible moment before sleep, when exhaustion became a trap. When closing your eyes meant surrendering the one piece of control you still had. When waking might mean relief, or blood, or another beginning.
And now he is here, in my bed, in my apartment, in a world that insists it is real because the blanket is soft and the rain is wet and my hand is in his.
But if he sleeps—If he wakes up somewhere else—I turn my face into the pillow to hide the way my mouth trembles. Kyung-jun notices anyway. His head shifts on the pillow. His eyes move to me. Immediate.
“What?” he asks. His voice is rough from disuse and too much staying awake. It scrapes through the dark quietly, but the sharp edge of him is still there, stripped down and hoarse.
I shake my head once.
His fingers tighten around mine.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like I’m stupid.”
I look at him then.
He is already looking at me so hard it feels like being held under light. The old Kyung-jun would have smirked after saying it. Would have made some cutting little comment, something ugly enough to make me roll my eyes and forget the tenderness underneath. This Kyung-jun only watches me with a kind of brittle intensity, as if my face is a language he has been studying in the dark for two years and he still cannot trust his own translation.
I swallow.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
It should be funny. It almost is.
The word comes out faintly, more habit than joke. There is no real bite behind it. He looks too tired to sharpen himself all the way. Too raw to hide under the familiar shape of cruelty. His thumb moves once over my fingers, dragging across the same place again and again until my skin tingles.
I let the silence settle. Then I begin to sit up. It happens fast. Too fast. Before I have even pulled my hand from his, Kyung-jun is upright.
The blanket twists around his waist, his hand clamping around my wrist, not enough to hurt but hard enough to stop me cold. His eyes are wide in the dim room.
Scared. It flashes across him nakedly before he can kill it.
“Where are you going?”
The words are quiet, but there is something terrible under them. A crack. A drop. A boy standing on the edge of losing the room, the bed, the girl beside him, the proof that this has not been another cruel loop designed to let him breathe before choking him again.
I freeze. My heart squeezes so hard my own fear forgets what it was doing.
“I’m not leaving.” His grip does not loosen. I say it again, softer. “I’m not leaving, Kyung-jun.”
His eyes flick over my face, then to the door, then back. His breathing has changed. He is trying to make it quiet, trying to force it down before I can hear how uneven it is, but I can hear it. I can feel it through his hand on my wrist. Each breath comes like it has to push past something lodged in his chest.
“Then where?”
“I want to take a bath.”
He stares.
I wet my lips. “I thought it might help. My nerves feel…” I stop, because the lie is not fully a lie, and that makes it harder to say. My nerves are ruined. My body feels wrung out, hollowed by shock and crying and the impossible weight of having him beside me again. But that is not why I am getting up. “The warm water might help.”
His gaze stays on mine. The room holds still. He knows.
Maybe not exactly. Maybe not the whole small, careful plan forming in my head — the salts under the sink, the big tub I used to love because it made my apartment feel softer than it was, the heat loosening his muscles, the steam making the room warm enough that sleep might creep up on him without feeling like a trap. But he knows there is something gentle in it, and gentleness is the thing that scares him most right now.
His throat moves.
“I’ll come with you.” He says it like he expects me to argue. I don’t. I nod.
Something in his face loosens so slightly I would have missed it if I had not spent two years keeping every piece of him alive in my memory. His fingers slide from my wrist to my hand. He does not apologize this time. Does not pretend he was not afraid. He just holds on and gets out of bed when I do, moving too carefully for someone his size, like the floor might shift if he trusts it too much.
My bedroom feels colder once we leave the blanket behind.
The apartment is dark except for the lamp near the couch and the faint blue wash of city light through the windows. We walk barefoot through the hallway. His hand stays locked around mine. Not romantic in the simple way it used to be when we would walk home after school and he would pretend he was holding my hand only because I was “slow” and “needed supervision.” This is different. His palm is damp. His fingers are cold. Every step he takes beside me feels measured against the possibility of waking somewhere else.
At the bathroom door, he stops. Just for a second. I glance back.
He is looking into the little room with a wariness that makes my chest ache. My bathroom is not frightening. It has never been frightening. It is small but pretty, tiled in soft cream, with a narrow window above the tub and a shelf crowded with bottles I always mean to organize. There is a separate bathtub tucked against the far wall, wide and deep, curved like something made for quiet. I bought eucalyptus salts once because the packaging looked calming and expensive, even though I knew I would probably only use them twice. A little wooden stool sits beside the tub with folded towels stacked on top. A candle I have never lit sits near the sink, dusty around the rim.
It is ordinary. Sweet, even. Kyung-jun looks at it like ordinary things cannot be trusted. I squeeze his hand. He looks down at me. Just those eyes, dark and sleepless, asking something he would rather die than put into words.
“You can keep the door open,” I say. He swallows. Then he shakes his head once.
“No.” The word is barely there. Not because he wants privacy. Because closing the door means choosing to believe nothing waits outside it. Because maybe he is tired of being afraid of doors. I nod and step inside first. He follows.
The bathroom light is too bright when I turn it on, and he flinches before he can stop himself. His jaw tightens immediately, anger rising instinctively to cover the crack, but it dies before reaching his mouth. He lowers his eyes and exhales through his nose, slow and hard.
I don’t say anything. I turn on the bath instead.
The pipes groan, then water spills into the tub, loud at first, rushing and silver under the light. Steam begins to lift almost immediately, softening the mirror, blurring the sharp edges of us. I kneel beside the tub and test the temperature with my fingers, letting the heat bite gently at my skin. Too hot. I adjust the tap. The sound fills the room until there is no need to talk, and maybe that is mercy. Maybe that is why I chose this. Water can cover silence without demanding it be explained.
Kyung-jun stands behind me.
I can feel him there.
Not touching now, but close enough that his shadow falls over my shoulder. When I reach under the sink for the salts, he shifts as if the movement startles him, then stills again. I pour a handful into the water. The crystals disappear in small white swirls, dissolving into the heat, and the faint smell of lavender and something herbal rises with the steam.
I expect him to say something. Lavender? Seriously? Are we old ladies now? Or, What is this rich-person bath nonsense? Or, You always buy useless stuff. He says nothing. That is worse. I turn. He is staring at me.
The bathroom light catches the hollows under his eyes. The steam beads faintly at his hairline. He looks too tall for the room, shoulders nearly filling the space between sink and wall, hands hanging at his sides like he does not know what to do with them if they are not holding onto me. His face has gone unreadable, but not in the old way. Not bored. Not cruel.
Bare. There is no audience here. No classmates to impress. No hallway to dominate. No game to survive by being louder than fear. Just him. Just me. Just the water filling the tub between us like something waiting to be crossed. I stand slowly.
The tile is cool beneath my feet. My oversized sleep shirt clings faintly where my palms are damp from the bathwater. For a moment, neither of us moves. The water keeps running. Steam curls upward. The mirror clouds at the edges until our reflections begin to fade, two blurred figures in a small warm room at the hour when nightmares usually have teeth.
I take one step toward him. His eyes lower to my mouth. Then back to my eyes. I lift my hand and touch his cheek. He closes his eyes.
The reaction is so immediate, so helpless, that I feel it down to my bones. He leans into my palm before pride can stop him. Enough for my thumb to feel the slight tremor in his jaw. Enough for the air to leave him like he has been standing in armor too heavy to breathe inside.
I kiss him.
Softly at first.
Because he feels like something cracked that might cut both of us if I move too quickly. His lips are still beneath mine for half a second, frozen in surprise or restraint or the exhaustion of wanting too much. Then he melts.
There is no other word for it.
His shoulders drop. His hands come to my waist, not grabbing, not claiming, just landing there like he has finally found somewhere to put all the shaking. His mouth opens against mine with a sound so quiet it disappears into the rush of bathwater. He kisses me back slowly, deeply, like speed would make it less real. Like if he rushes, the moment might tear. Like he has imagined this in so many versions of hell that now the real thing has to be handled with both hands.
My fingers slide into his hair.
He shudders.
The sound he makes then is almost nothing. A breath caught too low in his chest. It goes through me anyway, warm and painful, and my eyes sting behind closed lids because this is the boy I mourned and the boy who came back and the stranger made out of everything that happened while I was not there to hold him.
When I pull back, his eyes stay closed. His forehead rests against mine.
“Don’t stop,” he whispers. It is not seductive. It is ruined. I kiss him again because I cannot answer without breaking.
This time his hands tighten, but still not with the old carelessness. He holds me like someone trying to remember gentleness from another life. His thumbs press into my sides through my shirt. His breath shakes into my mouth. I feel him keeping himself still, feel the strain of it in every line of his body. Want and grief and terror have tangled so tightly inside him that none of them know their own names anymore.
I draw back just enough to touch the hem of his shirt. He opens his eyes. For a second, I see the question there. Not refusal. Not embarrassment. Permission. I give him time to pull away. He doesn’t. So I lift the shirt slowly.
The fabric rises over his stomach, his ribs, his chest. I keep my eyes on his face because this feels too tender to watch like discovery, too sacred to turn into anything else. His arms lift when I need them to. His breath catches when the shirt passes over his head. His hair falls messily back into his eyes after, and for one fleeting, devastating second, he looks like the boy from before, annoyed and beautiful and too proud to admit he likes being touched.
Then I see the marks.
Not all of them. Not clearly. The bathroom is warm and bright and full of steam, but my mind refuses to take him apart like evidence. Still, there are things I cannot miss. Faint bruising near one shoulder. A thin healing line along his side. Small round medical marks near the inside of his elbow. The sharpness of his collarbones where they never used to be so sharp. The places where his body has been maintained, restrained, neglected, returned.
My hands still. His gaze drops to them. Then to my face. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
“It’s ugly,” he says. Quiet. Flat. Like he has already decided what I am allowed to think. I step closer and press my mouth to the center of his chest. His entire body locks. Under my lips, his heart slams once, hard.
I stay there for a moment, my hands resting carefully against his sides, feeling the heat of him, the breath he is holding, the life beneath skin that was supposed to be gone. When I lift my face, his eyes are shining again, but his mouth is twisted with something angry and helpless.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
“What?”
He looks away.
“Make it worse.”
I touch his jaw and bring him back to me.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“How?”
His throat works.
“You make me want to live,” he says, and looks furious the second the words leave him. The bathroom seems to go silent beneath the water. I stare at him. He stares back like he wants to fight me for hearing it.
Then his face crumples at the edges, not enough for anyone else maybe, but enough for me. Enough that the boy who once called love embarrassing stands half-undressed in my bathroom at four in the morning and cannot hide the fact that survival has left him more frightened than death did.
I reach for his hands. He lets me.
“You are alive,” I say.
His fingers curl around mine.
“For now.”
The words are barely audible. Cold slides through me.
I want to argue. I want to say no, no, don’t say that, don’t put it in the room. But I understand too well what he means. Not that he wants to die. That he does not trust life to hold. That every time something good appears, he expects the lights to change, the announcement to play, the game to start again.
So I do not correct him. I lift his hand and press his knuckles to my mouth. His eyes shut.
“You’re here now,” I whisper. He breathes out unsteadily. “For now,” I add, because maybe that is the only truth his body can accept. His eyes open. Something in them softens, breaks, stays. I let go only long enough to take off my shirt.
His gaze follows the movement, but it does not feel like being looked at in the way I remember from before, when he would stare too long just to make me blush and then grin like he had won something. This is not that. This is quieter. Reverent in a way he would hate if I named it. His eyes move over me and stop, not hungry or careless, but stunned by proximity. By trust. By skin and breath and the fact that I am standing in front of him, not a memory he had to fight to keep, not a face blurring at the edges of some nightmare loop.
Just me. Real enough to be cold in the steam. I reach behind myself to unclasp my bra. His hand moves before he thinks, then stops halfway. Waiting again. That almost undoes me.
I finish it myself, letting the straps slide down my arms. The air touches me, warm and damp. I do not cover myself. Because he looks as if any sign of shame would kill something fragile in him. Because this is not about being seen beautifully. It is about being seen safely. It is about telling him with my body what words keep failing to prove.
I am here. I trust you. You can be here too.
His eyes lift to mine. There is no smirk. No comment. No old, sharp joke to ruin the softness before it can touch him. He only whispers my name. And it sounds like something he said in the dark to keep from disappearing.
I turn off the water. The sudden quiet is enormous.
Steam drifts around us, softening the room until the edges blur. We undress the rest of the way without speaking, speech feels too rough for what is happening. Clothing falls in small, ordinary sounds. Fabric against tile. A soft scrape. The whisper of a drawer opening when I take out two towels and set them within reach. We do not look away like strangers. We do not stare like lovers about to become reckless. We simply make space for each other’s vulnerability and try not to crush it with our hands.
When I step into the tub, the heat takes me by surprise.
It closes around my ankles, my calves, then my thighs as I sink down carefully. My body, wound tight for hours, resists it at first. Then the warmth reaches my hips, my stomach, my ribs, and something inside me loosens so suddenly that my eyes fill again. I turn my face away before Kyung-jun can see.
Too late. He sees everything now. He steps in after me.
For someone so tall, he moves slowly, lowering himself into the water behind me with a careful breath. The tub is big enough, but still, he fills it. His knees bracket mine. His body settles against the curved porcelain, and for a moment he holds himself away from me, as if the last inch matters. As if even now he thinks restraint is proof of goodness. Or control. Or survival.
The water shifts around us. Warmth rises. My back is almost touching his chest. Almost. Neither of us breathes properly. Then his hands come to my waist. He pulls me back.
My body slides through the water until I am flush against him, back to his chest, his legs around me, his arms folding over my stomach like gates closing. Heat surrounds me from every side: the bathwater, the steam, his skin, the trembling breath he releases against my shoulder. His chin lowers to the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. For a second, he just holds me there. Not kissing. Not talking. Holding.
His body shakes once. Then again. I cover his forearm with both hands. The water rocks gently against the sides of the tub.
“You’re warm,” he murmurs.
The words are so small I almost miss them.
I close my eyes.
“So are you.”
His arms tighten.
“No,” he says, voice rough. “I mean… you’re warm.”
Like that is proof too.
Like in the game everything had become cold eventually. Floors. Skin. Fear. Dead hands. Reset mornings with fake sunlight and no real warmth. Like the mind can be trapped somewhere so long it forgets the simple fact of another living body.
He presses his nose into my hair and inhales.
Not in that teasing way he used to do when he would complain about my shampoo and then bury his face in my neck anyway. This is different. He breathes me in like a person starved of air. Like scent is memory made physical. Like the lavender in the bath and the soap on my skin and the faint trace of rain still clinging to my hair are all anchors he can tie himself to before the world starts drifting again.
“I forgot your shampoo once,” he says.
My fingers still against his arm. His mouth is near my ear, but his eyes are not on me. I can feel it. He is staring at the water, or through it, or at something that is not in the room.
“In there,” he continues. “I remembered your face. Your voice. The way you used to look at me like you were deciding if prison was worth it. I would look at the pictures I had of you in my phone, rewatch the videos over and over until I thought I'd be sick of your voice or laugh, but I never did,”
A breath that is almost a laugh leaves me. His mouth brushes my temple, not quite a kiss.
“But the shampoo—” He stops. His throat moves against my shoulder. “I couldn’t remember it. It was such a stupid thing. I knew it was sweet. I knew I used to say it gave me a headache. I knew I liked it. But I couldn’t remember exactly.”
My chest hurts so sharply I press his arm harder against me.
“I thought that meant you were going,” he says.
The water feels suddenly too hot.
“Like pieces of you were getting taken. First that. Then maybe the way you looked at me. Or the way you felt against me. Then one day I’d wake up and know I was waiting for someone, but not who.” His voice thins. He swallows and presses his mouth to the side of my head, hard, as if stopping himself from saying more might physically hurt less. “I got scared.”
Kyung-jun saying scared is worse than crying. It is the bravest thing I have ever heard him do. I turn in his arms.
The movement makes water spill against the sides of the tub, a soft slap against porcelain. His hands loosen just enough to let me shift, then tighten again the moment I am facing him. I settle between his legs, knees tucked around him, water lapping at my ribs. His face is close now. Too close for hiding. Steam clings to his lashes. His hair curls slightly damp at the ends. His eyes are red-rimmed, furious with himself and still unable to stop.
I touch his cheek.
“You remembered enough.”
His jaw tightens.
“You don’t get it.”
“Then tell me.”
He looks away. I wait.
The old Kyung-jun hated waiting. He would fill silence by force, slash it open with mockery, make someone else uncomfortable before discomfort could settle on him. This Kyung-jun sits in the water with me at four in the morning and lets silence gather because there are no jokes strong enough to carry what he has brought back.
When he speaks, his voice is lower.
“At night, it was worse.”
My thumb stills against his cheek. He looks past me, toward the tiled wall.
“The game had rules. Times. Votes. Executions. People screaming at each other like screaming made them less likely to die.” His mouth twists. “Everyone got ugly. Me too. Maybe I was already ugly, so it wasn’t a big change.”
“Don’t.”
His eyes flick to mine. I do not look away. His expression shifts — irritation, old and familiar, rising for half a heartbeat — then it fades because he is too tired to pretend he does not understand why I stopped him.
He exhales.
“At night, you’d sit in a locked room with someone, not knowing if they'd kill you while you were passed out. We didn't even sleep, we just dropped the second the clock turned 12. Sometimes, before it was midnight and everyone had hid I would hear crying through the wall. Or someone praying which was stupid cause God had clearly not been there to save us...” His gaze drops to the water. “Sometimes you woke up and someone right next to you was dead.”
My throat closes. The water ripples between us.
He drags his wet hand up my back, not sensual, not searching. Grounding. His palm settles between my shoulder blades. His fingers spread there.
“One time,” he says, and the words come slower now, like each one has to be pulled through something thick, “I knew I was going to die. It was already happening, and all I could think was that I hadn’t said it to you.”
The room blurs. His eyes return to mine.
“I love you.”
The words land without performance. No smirk. No defensive bite. No embarrassment twisted into cruelty. Just truth, raw and plain and almost violent in its openness.
“I love you,” he says again, as if the first one might not count if he does not carve it deeper. “I loved you before. I loved you when I was acting like a piece of shit. I loved you when I picked fights over stupid things because I liked when you looked at me. I loved you when I said you were annoying. I loved you when you cried at that movie and I pretended I wasn’t watching you instead of the screen. I loved you when I didn’t say it because I thought saying it made me look weak.”
His mouth tightens.
“I was so fucking stupid.”
I shake my head, tears slipping silently now, warm down my face despite the steam. He wipes one away with his thumb. His hand is wet, so it does nothing except smear more warmth across my skin.
“I regret that,” he says. “More than dying. I swear to God. Every time I thought it was over, that was the thing. Not the pain. Not them. Not even being scared. It was you, standing somewhere outside all of it, not knowing. Maybe thinking I didn’t love you enough. Maybe thinking I was gone with all those stupid words still stuck in my fucking mouth.”
A sound breaks in my chest. He leans forward and kisses my cheek where the tear fell. Then the other. Then my forehead.
Each kiss is slow. Careful. Heavy with something that makes my hands tremble against his shoulders. He is not trying to lead us anywhere. Not trying to turn the moment into heat because heat would be easier than grief. He is kissing me like apology can be physical. Like love, if repeated enough against skin, might erase the silence he left behind.
“You don’t have to regret it,” I whisper. He stills. “You’re here now.” His eyes close. My fingers curl at the back of his neck. “You’re here,” I say again, because he needs it more than he needs air. “And I know. I knew then too.”
His eyes open. I swallow around the ache in my throat.
“I knew you loved me.” His face changes. It twists, almost in pain. I hurry before he can look away. “Not because you said it. You didn’t. Obviously.”
A broken little breath leaves him.
“But you’d walk on the outside of the sidewalk and pretend it was because I was too dumb to avoid cars. You brought me medicine when I had a fever and left it at my door. You remembered what convenience store drink I liked but made fun of it every time you bought it. You fixed my collar. You called me annoying when I cried but stayed until I stopped.”
His eyes are full now. He looks furious at them.
“So yeah,” I whisper. “I knew.”
For a moment, his face is so open I almost cannot look at him. Then he pulls me into him.
Water surges around us, spilling over the edge in a small wave that neither of us cares about. His arms lock around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other spread over my spine, pressing me against him until there is no space left for grief to sit between us. My face fits into the crook of his neck. His skin is hot from the bath, damp beneath my cheek. His heartbeat hammers against my chest.
“I’m going to say it all the time now,” he mutters into my hair.
I close my eyes.
“Okay.”
“You’ll get sick of it.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. You’re like that.”
“I’m really not.”
“You are.” His voice shakes. “And I don’t care. I’ll say it anyway.”
His mouth finds my shoulder. A kiss. Then another, higher, against the curve of my neck.
He kisses like someone counting places he thought he would never touch again. Shoulder. Neck. Jaw. Temple. The corner of my eye. My forehead. He kisses the tears before they can cool. He kisses my hairline and breathes there, raggedly, like he has found shelter beneath my skin.
“I love you,” he says against my temple. My hands slide up his back. “I love you,” he says again, lower. The words tremble through him. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
I begin crying harder, silently at first, then not silently. My shoulders shake. He holds me tighter immediately, one hand cupping the back of my head, fingers threading through wet hair. He does not tell me to stop this time. Does not say I look ugly. Does not panic at the sight of it. He just presses his mouth to my forehead and takes every sound like punishment he has decided he deserves.
I pull back enough to look at him.
“You don’t have to earn staying,” I say. His brows draw together. “You don’t have to say enough perfect things to make up for being gone.”
“I wasn’t gone by choice.”
“I know.”
His eyes flash.
“No,” he says. “You don’t.”
The words hit harder because they are not cruel. Only true. His hand slides from my hair to my cheek, holding me still, not forcefully but with a desperate focus that makes my breath catch.
“I tried to get out,” he says. “I tried so many times. I wasn’t just sitting there thinking about you like some sad drama lead.”
A tiny laugh breaks through my tears. His mouth curves for half a second, then disappears.
“I fought. I lied. I threatened people. I did stupid things. I did smart things too, sometimes.” His expression darkens. “I hurt people. Sometimes because I had to. Sometimes because I was scared and angry and didn’t know what else to do. And then it would reset, and they would look at me like nothing happened, and I’d forget what I’d done, or what they’d done, and everyone just kept… starting again.”
His breathing roughens. My hands tighten on his shoulders.
“Do you know how crazy that makes you?” he whispers. “Looking at someone eating breakfast after you watched them die? Hearing someone laugh after they begged? Wondering if this time they’ll kill you first, or if you’ll do it to them because you remember something they haven’t remembered yet?”
My stomach turns. He looks down.
“I wasn’t good in there.”
The confession falls between us quietly. The bathwater laps against my back.
I think of the boy he was before. Cruel, yes. Sharp-tongued. Violent. A bully when he wanted power and attention. Someone who laughed at fear because fear in other people made him feel larger. I think of what a place like that would do to him. A game built out of suspicion and death. A world where being mean might feel like armor. Where guilt would reset but memory would not always be merciful enough to vanish completely.
I touch his face again. He flinches at the tenderness, barely.
“You’re here with me now,” I say.
His eyes close like the words hurt.
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”
His lashes lift.
“I don’t know what happened in there yet. I don’t know what you did. I don’t know what was done to you.” My voice shakes, but I keep going because he deserves truth more than comfort dressed as lies. “But I know you came back carrying it. And I know you’re telling me instead of pretending nothing happened. That has to mean something.”
He stares at me for a long time. Then his face crumples.
He fights it. His mouth presses tight. His chin trembles once. His eyes shine and his brows pull together like anger can still hold the pieces in place if he just hates himself hard enough.
“I don’t want to be like before,” he says. My heart gives one hard, painful beat. His hand drops to the water, fingers flexing beneath the surface. “I don’t mean—” He stops, frustrated, searching for words he has never had practice using. “I’m still me. I’m not going to come back all nice and polite and bowing to every bastard who looks at me wrong.”
Despite everything, my mouth trembles toward a smile. His eyes catch it. A faint spark answers, then dims.
“But with you,” he says. “I don’t want to waste time being a coward.”
“You were never a coward.”
He gives me a look.
Even traumatized, exhausted, naked in a lavender bath at four in the morning, Go Kyung-jun can still make disbelief look insulting.
“I was,” he says. “With you, I was. I acted like wanting you didn’t scare the hell out of me. I acted like if I made you mad first, you couldn’t see how bad I had it. I picked fights because if we were fighting, at least you were looking at me.”
“You were terrible at romance.”
“I know.”
“You once threw a snack at my head because I said another boy was cute.”
His eyes narrow faintly. “He was ugly.”
“He was a kid.”
“He breathed through his mouth.”
I almost laugh again.
This time, he watches it happen with something like wonder and grief mixed together, like my almost-laughter is a thing he wants to put somewhere safe.
Then the softness returns to his face, solemn and stripped bare.
“I don’t want to do that anymore,” he says. “Not the stupid parts.”
“You’ll still fight with me.”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I echo, and the corner of his mouth moves.
“But not like before.” His thumb traces the wet curve of my shoulder, absent and careful. “Not leaving things unsaid because saying them feels embarrassing. Not acting like I don’t care when I do. Not making you guess if I love you.”
My throat tightens. He leans forward, pressing his forehead to mine.
“I love you,” he whispers again.
I close my eyes.
The words are beginning to change the room. It doesn't erase the two years of death and impossible loops and police files and empty funerals. But it changes something. Making the bathroom warmer than the water. Making the dark outside the window less endless. Each time he says it, the silence that lived between then and now loses one small inch of power.
“I love you too,” I whisper. His breath catches. As if he did not know. As if the whole night has not been built from it.
His hand comes up to my neck, palm warm and wet, fingers curving carefully beneath my jaw. He kisses me slowly. So slowly the kiss becomes less a kiss than a place to rest. His mouth moves against mine with a tenderness that feels learned in pain. There is no hunger pushing it forward, no urgency except the urgency of staying. I can taste salt on him. Tears, maybe mine, maybe his, maybe both of ours until it no longer matters.
When he pulls back, he does not go far. His nose brushes mine.
“You really kept that ugly picture?” I let out a tiny, watery laugh. The old shape of him flickers there, fragile and familiar.
“Yes.”
“Should’ve picked a better one.”
“You wouldn’t let me take better ones.”
“Because you take pictures like someone’s grandmother.”
“Your grandmother liked that picture.” His mouth softens at the mention of her. For a moment, he looks down at the water.
“She cried a lot?”
The question is almost too quiet. I nod. His jaw tightens.
“I was all she had,” he says.
I touch his arm.
“She still has you.”
His eyes close.
“Yeah.”
But it does not sound like relief yet. It sounds like a debt. Like another person he came back to wounded by his absence. Like living has given him everyone’s grief to hold in his hands.
“She never gave up,” I tell him.
He opens his eyes.
“Neither did you,” he says. I look away before I can stop myself. His hand catches my chin, gently but firmly, turning me back. “Don’t.” I blink. “Don’t act like it was nothing.”
The words settle heavily. I try to swallow, but the ache will not move.
“You had the worse part,” I whisper.
His eyes harden.
“No.”
“Kyung-jun—”
“No.” This time there is anger in it, but not at me. At the unfairness. At the years. At the idea that pain must be ranked before it is allowed to matter. “You buried me.”
I stop breathing.
His face changes as he says it, like the words have shown him a picture he cannot bear.
“You stood there,” he says slowly. “At some funeral with my picture. People saying I was dead. You had to—” His voice breaks, and he looks away, but his hand stays on me. “Don’t tell me that was nothing.”
The bathroom blurs.
I remember the white flowers. The black ribbon. His school photo. His grandmother’s hand crushing mine. The way my knees vanished beneath me. The ugly sound I made in front of everyone. The shame of crying for someone who should have been there to mock me for it.
“I hated you a little,” I admit. His eyes snap back to mine. I wipe my cheek with the heel of my hand, but it is useless. Everything is wet in here. My face, my hands, the air itself. “Not really,” I say quickly. “Not in a way that made sense. I just… you were gone. And I didn’t know where to put it. Everyone kept looking at me like I was sad, and I was, but I was angry too. Because you left me with all this love and nowhere to put it. I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t yell at you. I couldn’t tell you I missed you. I couldn’t even be mad at you properly because everyone thought you were dead, and you’re not supposed to be mad at dead people.”
Kyung-jun stares at me. The water cools around us by degrees, but neither of us moves.
“I was mad that you weren’t there to be awful about your own funeral,” I whisper.
His mouth trembles.
“I would’ve been awful.”
“I know.”
“I would’ve said the flowers were tacky.”
“They were.”
“And that everyone looked like shit.”
“They did.”
His eyes shine.
“And I would’ve told you to stop crying.”
I nod, tears slipping again. “Yeah.”
He leans forward and kisses them.
“I wouldn’t now,” he whispers against my cheek. My breath catches. He kisses the other cheek. “I wouldn’t.” His mouth rests at my temple. “I’d let you cry,” he says, voice raw. “I’d probably be useless, probably say something stupid. But I’d stay.”
I close my eyes and fold into him.
He holds me like he is trying to prove it retroactively. Like he can somehow go back to that funeral and stand beside me, alive and warm and scowling, and undo the black ribbon on his own picture. Like if he keeps his arms tight enough now, he can reach every version of me who slept in his hoodie and woke with his name already hurting in her mouth.
The bathwater is no longer as hot.
Steam fades slowly from the mirror, revealing us in blurred fragments. His shoulder. My hair. His arm around my back. The curve of the tub. Two faces too close together to see clearly.
Kyung-jun notices the change before I do.
“You’re getting cold.”
“I’m okay.”
He gives me a look that is pure, exhausted disdain.
“You’re shaking.”
“So are you.”
His mouth tightens. Neither of us moves.
Then, after a moment, he says, “Can we stay a little longer?”
I nod immediately. His relief is quiet but visible. A small loosening around his eyes. A deeper breath against my hair.
We shift again so I am back against his chest, his arms around me beneath the cooling water. I turn the hot tap on with my foot, just enough to warm the bath again, and he huffs softly behind me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re weirdly skilled at that.”
“I’ve had years of practice surviving without you.” The words slip out before I can soften them. His arms tighten. I feel his mouth press against the back of my head.
“Don’t,” he murmurs.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” His voice is low. “Say things like that. I need to hear it.”
I stare at the water. It shimmers under the bathroom light, broken by our breathing.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper.
“You think not hearing it makes it better?” I say nothing. His chin settles on my shoulder. “I need to know what I missed,” he says. “Even if it makes me feel like shit. I need to know you were here. That you kept going. That you hated me a little.” His breath trembles. “That you loved me anyway.”
My fingers trace the back of his hand under the water.
“I loved you the whole time.” His chest rises sharply against my back. “I hated that too sometimes,” I admit. “It felt pathetic. Like everyone else knew how to move forward and I was still standing in your room waiting for you to come home.”
His lips touch my shoulder.
“Not pathetic.”
“You would’ve called it pathetic before.”
His silence lasts long enough to answer.
Then he says, “Yeah.”
I close my eyes.
“I was an idiot.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I was an idiot at seventeen.”
“Still are a little.”
His mouth brushes my skin, and this time I feel the faintest smile there.
“Careful.”
The word has no threat in it. Only memory. Only the softest ghost of who he was before the world took him apart. The quiet stretches.
For the first time all night, his breathing begins to slow. Not sleep. Not yet. But the rhythm changes. His chest against my back rises and falls less violently. His hand stills over my stomach, fingers splayed, thumb resting near my ribs. The heat, the salts, the water, the dark hour turning slowly toward dawn — all of it begins to gather around him. Not forcing rest. Inviting it.
His head lowers until his forehead rests against my shoulder.
“I don’t want to wake up there,” he says.
The sentence is so soft I almost think I imagined it. My eyes open.
The bathroom is dimmer now, or maybe my eyes have adjusted. The light above us hums faintly. Outside the little window, the sky has begun to turn the color of watered ink.
“You won’t,” I say.
His hand tightens.
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I whisper. “I don’t.” He goes still. I turn my head enough that my cheek brushes his hair. “But if you wake up scared, I’ll be here.” His breath shakes against my shoulder. “And if you wake up and you don’t know where you are, I’ll tell you.”
His fingers curl against my skin.
“And if you wake up and think it was a dream, I’ll be really annoying until you believe me.”
A faint, broken sound leaves him. Almost a laugh. Almost a sob.
“Promise?”
I turn in his arms again.
The water moves around us, warmer now, softer. I cup his face in both hands. His eyes are heavy but terrified beneath it, exhaustion dragging at him while fear claws him awake. He looks at me like a boy at the edge of a dark room, refusing to step in unless someone promises to hold the door open.
“I promise,” I say.
His eyes search mine.
“Say my name,” he whispers.
“Kyung-jun.”
His face tightens.
Again, his eyes say.
“Kyung-jun.”
His hands come up over mine, pressing them harder to his cheeks.
“Again.”
“Kyung-jun.” His eyes close. The breath that leaves him is not relief exactly. But it is close.
I lean forward and kiss his forehead. Then the bridge of his nose. Then his mouth, gently enough that he does not have to kiss back if he is too tired.
He kisses back anyway. Because he is Kyung-jun. Because even broken, he reaches. Because need has always been the most honest thing about him, even when he used to dress it up as arrogance. When I pull away, his eyes stay closed.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you too.”
His mouth moves faintly. “Good.”
I almost smile.
“Bossy even half-dead.”
His eyes open a sliver.
“Not half-dead.”
“No?”
“No.” His hand slides to the back of my neck, heavy and warm. “I came back.”
My throat tightens.
“Yes,” I whisper. “You did.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and something in his gaze settles. Enough that when I shift back against him, he lets his head fall to my shoulder again. His arms close around me beneath the water. The world narrows to heat and breath and the slow pale line of dawn growing behind frosted glass.
He does not sleep yet. But he rests. And for Kyung-jun, for this hour, for this first night after the dead gave him back, that is enough. His lips move against my shoulder one last time.
“If I start acting like an asshole again,” he murmurs, voice thick and fading, “hit me.”
I turn my face toward his hair.
“I already do.”
A faint breath touches my skin. This one is almost a laugh.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Harder next time.”
Then he goes quiet.
Held against me in cooling bathwater, his heartbeat steadying slowly at my back, his fingers still tangled with mine beneath the surface like even rest has to be learned through touch. I stay awake with him as the night thins. I keep my hand over his. I keep breathing where he can feel it. And when the first gray light of morning slips into the bathroom, soft and uncertain and real, Kyung-jun is still there.
Authors Note: It has seriously been so long but I've been gone to study as well as test for my boards and didn't want any distractions, but I’m back and more motivated than ever! Thank you so much for all the messages of concern (that I am now only getting around to seeing). This was originally supposed to go up a bit sooner but I thought it was too heavy to start 2025 off with so it's here now instead. Happy New Year to everyone and if you're still reading this story I hope you can excuse the time off in exchange for more frequent updates now that I actually have time to myself. As always, I'd love to hear what you think! Until next time ♡
Faint morning sunlight filters through the sheer white curtains, casting a muted glow in the room. The quiet murmur of the world you've grown accustomed to is now inaudible, muffled by the window's thick glass, separating illusion from reality.
In this hushed room, the oppressive silence adheres to you like second skin, suffocating you in the familiarity—and the loneliness. Even as the clock on the wall ticks away signaling the passage of time, it's not enough to drown out the feeling that it has long since stopped—stalled at a moment where nothing feels possible, where hope is just an echo of something impossible.
A sense of heaviness settles atop your body, aching as though it has been carrying the weight of far too many days for far too long.
Your eyelids flutter open languidly, the effort of rising from the darkness of sleep too much to take. For a moment, you sit still, staring at the tender rays filtering in, but it offers no warmth, only a pale reminder of things that once felt brighter.
Feeble shadows dance across the walls, reflecting off the surface of the floors.
In the dulled haze of the scattered sunbeams, the light is neither enough to pierce through the darkness of your dismal dreams nor your despairing reality.
The beautiful, soft, and serene sunlight doesn't touch your heart any longer, for even if it did, it wouldn't change a single thing.
It feels like a lie, that sunlight.
It promises warmth, but it doesn't deliver.
Your chin quivers and you bring your fingers to your face, rubbing your eyes in an effort to physically hold back the tears. Wanting to close your eyes for just a second, even that small release of tension only makes you more aware of the pressure in your chest.
Only when warm hands envelop your own to gently pull them away do you turn to its source.
Jun-Hee's brown eyes are the first thing you see and shielding your heart, you remain strong, holding his gaze.
It brings you comfort, but also trepidation, as you focus on his irises, a rich, deep hue contrasting that of the soulless, colorless shade of murky white imprinted in your subconscious.
Death was staring at you through his eyes in that vivid nightmare, and instead of running away, you had run toward it.
You both sit completely still in one another's presence for a couple more minutes before the familiar lump lodges its way in your throat the longer you look at him and circling through a million what-if's.
It's too much.
Too much to keep pretending that things will get better.
No longer being able to ground your thoughts or steady your breaths, your hands fall from his and you rise on shaky feet, walking in a non-linear line seeking escape.
The silence swells again and you step forward, feet carrying you toward the door, each movement mechanical.
There's no destination in mind, no plan. Just the thought that perhaps if you walk long enough, if you move far enough, you can outrun whatever's holding you here.
But deep down, you know that you won't.
You know that you can't.
As you pass a mirror hung up on the adjacent wall, you stop short in your tracks.
You swallow, then blink at your reflection in the mirror, barely recognizable to your own self, splatters of blood dotted across your visage and eyes devoid of hope.
It makes you physically hurt.
It makes you want to scream out loud.
Instead, you bite down on your lip hard enough to draw blood and swipe at your own face, each pass more aggressive than the last.
No matter how hard you press, the streaks merely smear, yet refuse to disappear completely.
You wonder if this is how it will be once this is all over.
Try as you might, you can't imagine in the slightest ever being able to rid of the gruesome memories.
The tears.
The blood.
The deaths.
The world outside continues on, unchanged, while you remain stuck in this place, trapped in the moment between yesterday and tomorrow.
At the next raise of your hand, Jun-Hee winds his fingers around your wrist and tugs it down tenderly but still firmly enough that it brings you back to your senses.
The familiar rage and hurt bubble inside your chest and you force it down, bottling your emotions as you have always done.
Wordlessly, Jun-Hee throws open the room's door and drags you along on a path straight to the bathrooms.
He turns your shoulders, facing you away from the wall length mirrors, back pressed against the counter of sinks.
The light flickers overhead as you hang your head, silent sobs wracking your body. Jun-Hee stands in the doorway, heart twisting in his chest at the sight of you. For as long as he has known you, your strength had always been something he admired. But now, you were breaking, and he felt helpless.
"Seol-Hwa," he whispers, voice thick with emotion. "Please."
Your shoulders shudder as you look up, eyes swollen and red. The weight of everything you couldn't say crushes you, too heavy for words.
With determination, Jun-Hee crosses the threshold to stand in front of you, bending down to eye level and ever so gently reaching forward to cup your face in his hands. His touch is steady, even as he fears you would pull away hearing your breath hitch at the contact.
"Look at me," he murmurs, low and even. "I want you to see your reflection of yourself as I see you. Deflect all your pains, your worries, and your fears onto me. In my eyes, there is only you."
Tears make their descent down your face so you shakily inhale, trying to stop the streaming rivulets. Jun-Hee gingerly steps ever closer, thumbs brushing over your cheeks to trace the lines of every drop.
"I—I don't know how to fix it," you choke out, voice trembling. "No one can."
As your tears continue to fall unbidden, Jun-Hee sighs and reaches around you for a stack of paper towels, dampening them with cool water before softly wiping your face as if he were erasing the pain one swipe at a time.
Rather than pulling away or flinching, you surrender to the tender touch, breath slowing just a little with each movement. You can't help but to stare, the course of your nightmare haunting you even when awake.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"It's—" you pause, not knowing how to approach it. You decide if you didn't start, Jun-Hee wouldn't have to learn of the ending. "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing if it has you like this."
You shake your head, lips pressed into a firm line.
"Was it a bad dream?"
Hesitantly, you nod, tears brimming on your waterline once more. "In it...you left." It was neither of your faults, yet the words come out laced with bitterness yet also chock-full of longing, of pain, and of regret. "You left...and I was all alone."
Jun-Hee pulls you into a tight hug, tucking your head beneath his chin. He didn't have answers. He couldn't make it disappear. But he could be here. He could hold you.
"Is that what you're afraid of?" One hand comes to nestle the back of your head, patting softly in reassurance. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Wrapping your arms around him, you rest your ear against his chest, finding solace in his beating heart signaling life, chambers of sound echoing your feelings for him.
"The future seems far too bleak to give us a choice to stay."
"In any circumstance, even if I had to leave, I would always come back to you, Seol- Hwa."
The monotonous announcement drones on soporifically, seemingly mocking Yu-Jun's cries that nearly mask every single word like knives probing at the still-open wounds in his heart.
You can barely bring yourself to watch even after the others have left the scene one by one as Yu-Jun holds Ji-Soo's limp body in his arms behind the previously impenetrable door now split down the middle, a parallel to their parting.
"This can't be..." Yu-Jun intones in despair, shaking his girlfriend's shoulders to no avail. "I still need you here with me..."
Recognition comes at you in full force, causing you to stumble back, clutching at the doorframe in reliance as your head spins, the same exact words you had said to Jun-Hee in your nightmare reverberating in the dark recesses of your mind, echoing far too loud in the vicinity of the now empty hallway.
Sensing the movement, Yu-Jun glances over, a flash of surprise to see you still there, before it's gone and replaced by utter grief.
Pulling yourself together, you hesitantly approach. Even as you kneel down next to the two, you're met with no resistance nor reticence as you had expected.
"You don't have to stay. No one else did." Yu-Jun's voice is muffled as he pulls Ji-Soo ever closer, hunching over with his head against her own.
"I know I don't have to, but I want to," you emphasize.
At this, he looks up, confused. "I don't understand. I'm not someone who should be on the receiving end of kindness."
"That doesn't mean you deserve this," you gesture around, noticing somberly as his hands tighten, clutching at the fabric of Ji-Soo's now crinkled white shirt. "None of us do."
"Maybe I do." Yu-Jun stares straight forward at the wall, focusing on nothing. "Maybe this is karma for everything I've done wrong."
"We're people. Everyone makes mistakes. It's part of being human."
Yu-Jun chuckles darkly. "Tell me, what kind of mistake is this game then?"
"A fatal one."
There's a long stretch of silence between you two before he speaks up. "I'm sorry." You're taken aback by the sudden admission of regret, unable to hide your reaction. Yu-Jun clears his throat awkwardly before addressing you with sincerity. "My friend group, me included, haven't always been the nicest to you or yours and even though I knew it deep down, I never owned up to it. On behalf of them and myself, I want to apologize." His breaths come out ragged with so much still to convey between every intake of air. "In case—" he glances down again at Ji-Soo in his arms and brushes away stray strands of hair from her face. "—I don't get the chance to say the things I've saved to say."
"Do you have words that you regret never having said?"
"Three. Only three."
You can guess what it is without confirmation from the way Yu-Jun's lips quiver, eyes filled with unshed tears.
"Stay alive for her."
"I don't know if I can."
"You will," you respond with certainty, rising back on your feet.
"How are you so sure?"
"Are there not people you still want to save, including yourself?"
Realization finally makes its way onto his face. "H-How did you figure it out? T-That I'm a doctor?" The words come out in broken stutters.
You pull out your phone and turn it around, showing the resurrection screen. "It's hard to recognize those against you, but it's even harder to recognize those with you. We shouldn't let one another down."
Yu-Jun opens and closes his mouth, struggling to find the right words to say. "I feel as though I've already disappointed so many. A second chance is not something I deserve."
"Rather than saying you don't deserve things, prove that you do."
"Do you...not have any desire to reserve revival for yourself? "
"I could, but that defeats the whole purpose of this responsibility assigned to us in saving the innocent. Doctors place the needs of others before their own. Is that not what we are now?"
Yu-Jun's entire demeanor shifts from reluctant to resolute, from hopeless to hopeful. "I'll do my best so that no more sacrifices will be done in vain."
A faint smile adorns your face, acknowledging the partnership wordlessly. "Whatever happens, don't forget to protect yourself even as you're protecting the others."
Yu-Jun makes a sound of affirmation as you turn to leave. "Wait—"
You look back over your shoulder. "What is it?"
"You're a really good person, Seol-Hwa, just as Jun-Hee has always said. I see why he likes you so much."
Faltering, the corner of your lips imperceptibly curl downward. "We're best friends. He's obligated to say that."
"I don't think feelings are an obligation."
"Feelings never do well in a life or death situation."
"Do you have words that you regret never having said?" Yu-Jun uses your own verbatim against you.
Your eyes waver but you tamper down your emotions, refusing to let them show. "I had a dream last night where I said the words I've always wanted to say and Jun-Hee and I still wind up, over and over again, at only one ending sequence."
"And that ending is?"
Swiveling your head back around to hide the tears wanting to fall, you whisper quietly before walking away, "The same as your's."
Despite Yu-Jun declining to join, the rest reconvene in the deserted warehouse, as barren and cold as you were feeling.
Everyone is on edge, warily eyeing one another, no longer trying to hide the smallest ounce of suspicion.
Yoon-Seo speaks up next to you, words curt as she crosses her arms across her chest. "What's the reason for calling all of us down here?"
If it was possible, Kyung-Jun is even more patronizing, walking back and forth in the center with his head held high. Haughtily, he turns to the group. "Do you all not know or are you pretending not to?" He smirks. "Park Woo-Ram, that bastard, the one who deceived all of you was the Mafia. Just who was the only person to pinpoint that?" Throwing his hands up in a show of bravado, he motions for applause. "Me."
Solely, Seung-Bin claps, always one to grovel at his leader's feet. "Of course, it's no one else but you with the great hunch." His positive countenance morphs to one of disdain, transitioned so seamlessly, that it makes you wonder if he has ever displayed a genuine expression. "I can't say the same for you lot of Police. Whoever you all are, you could learn a thing or two from Kyung-Jun."
The person in question waves him off to the back and steps forward, hands in his pockets. "Hear that? If you want to catch the Mafia, do as I say."
Beside you, Jun-Hee deadpans, "Do what?"
"You'll take turns saying who you think is guilty and I'll pick for you."
Whispers grow amongst your classmates and you can sense the growing frustration directed at a single player.
Scoffing, Jun-Hee shakes his head in disbelief. "Who are you to decide? It's up to all of us."
"There's not enough collective intelligence for us to do that. Did you all forget how and why I nearly died last night? Who other than me is definitely a Citizen?" Kyung-Jun strides the length of the room as he scrutinizes everyone in turn, shaking his pointer finger in succession but ultimately drops it as he reaches you. Seeing your mien of indifference, he pivots back around, leaving his next words hanging in the air. "I think the rest of the Mafia members are hidden among those who voted for me yesterday."
"That doesn't mean anything," Na-Hee defends.
"Oh really?" Kyung-Jun whirls back around, fixating on Na-Hee and clucks his tongue at her. "On the contrary, it means everything. For the fact alone that you all sided with the opposition to rid of me. What clearer evidence is there?"
"How were we supposed to know?" Jun-Hee states clearly. "Don't judge based on one round where no one had the slightest clue."
"Then, what should I assess you on?" Kyung-Jun retorts. "Voting is the entire point of this game to figure out who's who."
"Your logic is shit if that's all you use to reason with," Jung-Won admonishes.
"You bitch—"
So-Mi cuts in abruptly, changing the topic of conversation for the time being. "What about Ji-Soo then? Why kill someone so randomly without the need to?"
"Who cares about intention when you yourself could die?"
Behind him, you can see Jin-Ha and Seung- Bin look at one another briefly, weary looks on their faces at Kyung-Jun's words, message loud and clear: Friendship amounts to nothing when it comes to survival.
Yeon-Woo timidly voices from the back. "So, Ji-Soo wasn't the Doctor then?"
"Read the notification carefully," Eun-Chan murmurs to his friend. "She was a Citizen, but that doesn't mean Yu-Jun is."
“Yesterday," Da-Bum adds, "the Police used their skill, so why didn't the Doctor?"
Mi-Na bites at her nails. "Right, because then Ji-Soo would still be here."
You catch sight of Yu-Jun outside through the metal bars across the window opening and once your eyes meet, he hangs his head in shame, walking away forlornly, no longer wanting to listen any further.
No one else notices the exchange and you breathe out on a long exhale, just as much guilty.
"Don't you all think it's weird?" So-Mi's question draws the interest of those next to her. "On the third floor, it was just Ji-Soo and Yu-Jun alone. How come only one of them made it out alive?"
Mi-Na looks over at So-Mi with a gasp. "Could Yu-Jun be a Mafia?"
"Damn," Jin-Ha intones. "If that's true, he really took his girlfriend's life."
In order to not compromise the chance of survival, although knowing that couldn't be farther from the truth especially after seeing the aftermath of the two, you bite down on your tongue to keep peace.
"She did always give him a hard time, what with telling him off and her short temper..." Yeon-Woo trails off.
"Enough of this useless talk that serves no real purpose in pressing matters." Despite the silent resistance, Kyung-Jun still mongers fear in the rest. "I'll single out someone as I see fit."
"How funny! He thinks he's actually in charge," Jung-Won mutters under her breath.
"This one." He spurns her and focuses on Jun-Hee, gesturing condescendingly. "You can tell when he did all that he could to safeguard Woo-Ram."
"Anyone would've done so to save someone who we thought would be a Citizen," you spit out. "Haven't we all been betrayed by someone we trusted?" Kyung-Jun's eyes slide over to yours, jaw clenched, not missing what you alluded to. "If it wasn't you against him, would you be able to say there wasn't even a one percent chance where you couldn't believe him?" His eyes don't leave yours, watching intently your effort at justification. "In the end, we're just victims of a killer."
"Seol-Hwa's right," Na-Hee agrees meekly. "We shouldn't vote just because of a wrong guess."
"Then, let's vote for the right guess this time: Jun-Hee."
"Don't you know about presuming innocence? Stop insisting when you don't have proof." You glare him down. "This isn't a witch hunt where we vote on the basis of who we dislike most."
Kyung-Jun steps toward you and you can feel Yoon-Seo grab your elbow to pull you back but you don't budge even as he bends down, tilting his head to the side, gazing steadfastly at you. "Do you have evidence then?" He fixes you with a challenging stare, reversing your words. "We can't defend based on who we like most."
"You want evidence?" He falters as you merely smile without any real happiness behind it. "I have it."
The hum of the old computer fan is the only sound in the small, dimly lit basement before the clicking of keys fills the silence, rhythmic, almost hypnotic.
Jung-Won's fingertips run across the keyboard, eyes locked on the screen, face bathed in the pale glow of the monitor. She wasn't aware of those standing behind her, too focused, too intent, to notice the interest of the rest, and the trepidation of yours.
"We can get the entire Mafia crew in one go if I manage to pull this off."
From the shadows of the basement, the sound of Seung-Bin's foot tapping repetitively against the floor echoes incessantly. "This is useless. Can't you work any faster than at the rate of a turtle?" His voice breaks the stillness of the room, laced with frustration.
"You're also useless. You have no right to speak," Jung-Won berates, tone sharp as she adds to the tension.
You see the screen flash and spring up from your seat next to Jun-Hee atop a half broken wooden bench discarded in the room. "Do you see anything?"
"I thought I would but..." Jung-Won spins in her chair to face you, "it's all deleted. The files are completely wiped—everything on the drive."
"That can't be." You refuse to even entertain the thought that someone else could've chanced upon this room, especially not after the weird circumstance in which you found it. "Look again." Grabbing Jung-Won's arm a bit too tightly, you urge her to scour the different file locations.
An uneasy silence hangs in the air as you both turn toward the computer once again. Your eyes bat nervously from folder to folder, trying to find something—anything—but the cursor only blinks in emptiness, mocking your desperation.
"It's not that," Jung-Won says aloud as she clicks around, clattering growing louder in defiance. "Any remaining content on here wasn't formatted properly from the start. Whoever had access to this in the first place made sure no else would after them. All traces are erased."
You can't answer right away. Jung-Won's gaze is fixed, but her fingers had slowed. The screen blinks once, twice, before the folder she'd been trying to open vanishes entirely.
A chill runs down your spine.
"It's not... it's not possible..." you whisper, words in tatters. You reach for the mouse but the screen flickers then blacks out entirely as a faint row of red text flashes in the corner.
Deleted: System Error.
The room goes deathly still.
You squeeze your eyes together tightly, stomach in knots and heart plummeting.
"Han Seol-Hwa," comes Jin-Ha's voice. "Were you trying to fool us all? Bring up nonexistent evidence? Nice team-play, Mafias."
"It's not like that! They knew of it beforehand. We're too late!" you shout back, knowing full well evading this accusation just became that much more difficult.
Jin-Ha is about to open his mouth again to reproach you, but one look from Kyung-Jun shuts him up immediately despite his growing displeasure at the newfound tandem. The latter studies you, gauging. "Are you doing this for yourself or for someone else? This whole thing was only brought up because I cornered Jun-Hee earlier."
"Let's calm down and consider the situation first." Yu-Jun sends you what he thinks is a look of support, but even in his encouragement, you can sense that worry outweighed it.
"Don't think you're off the hook either, girlfriend murderer," Kyung-Jun warns Yu-Jun.
"Did you, or did you not, know that this place would have bird's eye view of everything because you were planning to rid of evidence from the beginning?" Jin-Ha corrals you into another corner and you can sense Kyung-Jun holding himself back from going rouge on him.
Jung-Won is by your side in an instant, hands around your shoulders. "You're even dumber than you look."
"Yah!"
"If that was her intention, why would she willingly bring us all here? Unless you've been lobotomized, in what world would someone expose themselves if they're at fault?"
"Whatever," Kyung-Jun concludes, and you look away, expecting him to vote for you without doubt as his finger taps at his screen with finality. "My intuition has never been wrong."
Before the intercom can even announce his choice, Jin-Ha steps in between him and the door, eyes shifting from you to Kyung-Jun and back, equal parts in disbelief and anger. "Have you gone crazy? What are you doing?!"
Seung-Bin stands stunned, looking between the two.
"Didn't you two say that I had a great hunch a few moments ago and everyone should take note?" Kyung-Jun shoves Jin-Ha aside, the shorter of the two bumping into the wall with a thud before a finger is jabbed into the middle of his chest. "Get to learning, bastard."
"Aish shibal!"Jin-Ha curses after his leader's retreating back as Seung-Bin drags him along, the three exiting ultimately with unanimous votes, choices conformed to Kyung-Jun's.
As Mi-Na and Eun-Chan turn to leave as well, you grab at them in a rush. "I really am a Citizen." At their unconvinced looks, you double down. "I'll prove that I am. Please, at least give me until the end of today."
With their evidently remaining suspicions, Eun-Ha comes to your aid. "I trust her. If there's one person who I'm most certain is a Citizen, it has to be Seol-Hwa." She reaches out her hand and gives yours a light squeeze even as your own shakes against hers.
[ ɢᴏ ᴋʏᴜɴɢ-ᴊᴜɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ sʜɪɴ sᴇᴜɴɢ-ʙɪɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊɪɴ-ʜᴀ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
"I'll be able to restore a few files if I spend a bit more time familiarizing myself with this interface," Jung-Won declares resolutely and you, once again, feel guilty for harboring doubts against her. "I can at least promise this."
"Yes, guys," Na-Hee adds on. "We can vote before night falls once we've all calmed down and have more sound reasoning."
Da-Bum nods in agreement. "We'll know for sure by then. Let's not jump to a decision."
Eun-Ha nudges Mi-Na and Eun-Chan on either side of her, before turning around to motion at Yeon-Woo with her head. They all relent, albeit reluctantly, and as Eun-Ha follows them out of the room, she turns back to give you a half smile in silent support.
So-Mi merely smirks and leaves with everyone else aside from your immediate group, her steps light, your distress her happiness.
You plop back down on the bench and cover your face with your hands. "This is a disaster."
Hyun-Ho scoots in beside you and pats you on the head comfortingly.
"Don't give up just yet." Dong-Hyun fiddles around with the multiple outdated TV's on the opposite wall. "We won't either."
"Da-Bum," Jung-Won calls. "Did you by chance bring a laptop with you?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I need all the help I can get. With your assistance, we should be able to regain lost footage at the earliest an hour before midnight."
"Is that possible? To restore everything?" Da-Bum questions.
"Of course not everything, but if we try our best, clips from the third floor hallway where the incident happened last night is completely doable." Jung-Won is entirely confident as she notifies the group chat while Da-Bum rushes off to get the additional device needed.
Their efforts on behalf of you warm your heart, yet deep down, you can't bring yourself to bask in the momentary peace.
Saving yourself will mean losing Jun-Hee.
The city lights on high above the rooftop cast a backdrop of white behind Jun-Hee, the stark contrast against his black hair like a shining halo.
When he turns to look at you, you can't find it in yourself to hold eye contact, instantly drowning anew in the visions of your nightmare, slipping beneath a blanket of white, the color of surrender.
You wrap your arms around yourself as the frigid night air bites against your skin, and noticing your shivering, Jun-Hee scoots in noticeably closer, pressed against your side in an attempt to offer warmth.
"Is it difficult for you?"
"What is?"
"Giving me your full support, trusting me— believing me without doubt."
Jun-Hee pulls your head onto his shoulder and leans his own against yours. "It's the opposite. You make it easy. I can entrust you with my life."
"Even if all the evidence is evading me?"
"Even then."
Closing your eyes, you let the rise and fall of his shoulder as he breathes calm you. "Why do you trust me so much?"
"I know the kind of person you are, and I know your heart."
"If everyone were to lose their trust in me, as long as you still believe in me, I don't need anything else."
"I'll always be by your side."
"It's weird," you begin. "Not once have I ever thought about my biggest fear, but every night since we have been here, the scent of death keeps lingering, both in my reality and subconscious. I can't rid of it."
"Anyone would say the same."
"Would you?"
"My only fear is that I won't be able to protect you until the end."
You raise your head only to find him already looking at you.
"Is it selfish of me to say that I'm scared? I know the possibility of making it out of here is close to none, but to imagine myself dying, I simply can't." Unabashed, you find yourself crying, tears falling down in twin trails against your cheeks. "I don't want to go like this."
"Who says you have to?" Jun-Hee's right hand cups the side of your face and with his thumb, he brushes away the teardrops cascading down, a mirrored reflection of the morning. "I would never let you die. Until my last breath, I'll make sure you're safe."
"You should always put yourself first, Jun- Hee."
Pulling his hand away from your face, he cradles both of your hands in between his and tightens his own around them.
"Don't you know that I would die for you?"
Shaking your head, you try to get him to rescind his words. "I'm not someone of importance you should sacrifice yourself for."
He smiles lightly. "To me, no one is more important than you—not even my own self."
Your breath catches in your throat and you swallow around the lump forming. "Promise me we'll go home together once this is all over."
Jun-Hee's eyes waver with uncertainty but ultimately nods. "I promise."
"You know it would never be home without you right?"
"Neither without you, Seol-Hwa."
"Then, you can never leave me here alone, if you aren't with me."
"How cute," Jun-Hee suddenly intones and you're taken aback at the fond way he says it. "You think it's possible for me to quit you." He slides off of the bench you two are sitting on, before kneeling down in front of you. From his pockets, he dangles a braided red string between his fingers as he looks up at you, the glimmer of stars reflecting in his eyes. "I wanted to give you this for our friendship anniversary but more than ever, there's no time like the present."
"You've kept this with you the whole time?"
Jun-Hee nods, fiddling with the thin strands to tie around your wrist. "I recently went to Jejudo with my parents and this really kind elderly craftsmen told me these can serve as wish bracelets, granting what the wearer most desires in their hearts." He rotates the woven strings around and you see a small white jade flower charm, its center hollowed-out, dangling from the middle. A snow flower. Your namesake. "The harabeoji said to me, with the brightest smile on his face, that I looked like I had a hidden wish but seemed far too skeptical for his liking. To my surprise, he gifted me with two and told me that sometimes, luck comes only once in a lifetime."
Grinning, he presses the textured string into your outstretched hand and you settle his forearm in your lap, wrapping the bracelet around the opposite wrist you were wearing yours on. His charm is the piece that completes yours, a simple solid sphere—a perfect match.
"I heard that until your wish comes true, the string shouldn't break prematurely, or it will never come to fruition."
"That's what the harabeoji reminded me of too, but I believe ours will be granted." "Do you really think that luck only comes once in a lifetime?"
"I don't know about that, but what I do know is that I must've used all my luck in order to meet someone like you." Jun-Hee runs his thumb over the inside of your wrist where the stone pendant rests against your pulse point, a line leading to your heart. "You're my once in a lifetime person, Seol- Hwa."
A few hours later and your unease has yet to settle, not even at the confirmation text from Jung-Won alerting to her success.
"I think it's safe to say that we'll have the most important of clues as evidence." After a final flurry of movements, Jung-Won stretches her fingers. "There. It's done." She points to the screen and those closest to her promptly swarm the monitor to see. "With the time limit I had, I was only able to bring back the film from yesterday, but that should be more than enough to figure out who entered the room where Yu-Jun and Ji-Soo were."
Before you even have the chance to breathe a sigh of reprieve, smoke starts rising from the console as sparks fly, only briefly at first and then heightening into a full blown flame.
Jun-Hee grabs the nearest fire extinguisher and douses the system unit, but all that remains in the fallout is charred metal. You stare at the black matter, the futility of it ridiculing.
Kyung-Jun touches the box only to recoil at the heat that singes his skin. It's beyond saving and he can only chuckle. "As if murder wasn't enough, you all want to add arson to your list of crimes too? Was this a ploy in hopes that we would all burn down? Is that it?"
"Guys—" Eun-Chan interjects, pointing a shaky finger at the monitor in the corner of the room everyone ignored up until now. "What the hell is that?!" At his question, the screen lights up with colored strips of static that steadies into clear footage, the pool coming into view.
Except, it isn't the only thing visible.
Long dark hair masks the face of an otherworldly figure standing eerily still in the middle of the scene, hands at her sides. For some inexplicable reason, you feel like you've seen her before.
"Seol-Hwa's right..." Na-Hee utters, panic-stricken. "There really is a ghost..."
At that, you suddenly remember the photo you still had in your possession. Drawing it out of your skirt pocket, you briskly extend it toward the group, directing them to focus on one particular individual. "I think... there's something other than us here. She— that apparition—must have something to do with the game."
"Stop with your nonsense," Jin-Ha chastises. "You all must've faked this video to rid of skepticism."
"You idiot," Jung-Won retorts. "Look at the live stamp. It's filming in real time. I know using your brain isn't something you tend to do, but at the very least, tell me your eyes work."
"Whatever this may be," you start, eyeing everyone in succession, "will you just simply go along with it and play the game until we all perish? What if you win? Do you think you can actually make it out of here alive?" Your voice rises, both in exasperation and resentment. "Is it possible for any of us to be the same afterward?" Shaking your head, you fix the rest with a steely glare. "Get a grip! If we find the correlation between every cryptic piece of information, we might finally be able to break free of this illusion."
Without waiting for a response or agreement, you dash off toward the pool, and as you arrive, to your astonishment, the rest ended up following.
Aside from your friend group, Eun-Ha, Na- Hee, and Yu-Jun, the remaining ones do nothing to help. While you search high and low for the right angle the footage could've been captured from—even a glimpse of a hidden camera—the clock ticks by, drawing ever nearer to the hour of death.
"Time's almost up," Kyung-Jun reminds. "Are you all abandoning the poll then?"
"How about we vote in a different way?" Jun-Hee suggests.
So-Mi runs one hand through her hair as she stands akimbo. "I know you mean well, but we don't have enough time to think of another plan. How are we to do it?"
Kyung-Jun casts her aside carelessly and she stumbles, sending him dirty looks from behind his back. "Do you think we're foolish enough to go along with your idea once again? After your last one nearly ended us all? What bullshit are you spewing now?"
"Listen to him first and then decide," Jung-Won reasons, and that settles it for the time being, her intelligence holding weight.
"We have sixteen votes between all of us, and the basis for execution is by the majority. So, why don't we divide the remaining votes equally?"
"Aren't you just trying to save yourself at this point?" Kyung-Jun questions. "You've already received three. Why not take one for the team?"
"I would gladly do it as a last resort."
Jung-Won steps in before pessimism calls for drastic measures. "If I understand this correctly, you want for us to try splitting our choices in order to force a tie?"
"Yes." Jun-Hee's validation draws both curious and concerned murmurs from the group. "If we do so, it will guarantee that all of us will vote without abstaining, and that one person won't be fixed as a target. It'll bypass all the rules we've learned of so far."
"But, who will be one the one to receive the other half of the votes?"
"I will."
"Are you out of your damn mind?!" Kyung-Jun outstretches his hand, almost as if to convince you otherwise, but withdraws when it occurs to him the setting, opting to clench it at his side instead, the vein on his neck visible even under the dim lights.
"Why?" you press. "You all suspected me from the get-go, did you not?" That stuns everyone into silence, unable to refute. "I won't blame anyone. This is my choice."
[ ᴊɪɴ ᴅᴀ-ʙᴜᴍ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴏʜ ᴊᴜɴɢ-ᴡᴏɴ. ]
[ ɪᴍ ᴇᴜɴ-ᴄʜᴀɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ɴᴀᴍ ʏᴇᴏɴ-ᴡᴏᴏ. ]
[ ɴᴀᴍ ʏᴇᴏɴ-ᴡᴏᴏ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ɪᴍ ᴇᴜɴ-ᴄʜᴀɴ. ]
[ ᴀʜɴ ɴᴀ-ʜᴇᴇ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ᴏʜ ᴊᴜɴɢ-ᴡᴏɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ʟᴇᴇ ʏᴏᴏɴ-sᴇᴏ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ʙᴀᴇᴋ ᴇᴜɴ-ʜᴀ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ ᴋɪᴍ ᴅᴏɴɢ-ʜʏᴜɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ᴊᴀɴɢ ʜʏᴜɴ-ʜᴏ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ ᴄʜᴀ ʏᴜ-ᴊᴜɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ sᴏ-ᴍɪ. ]
[ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs ᴀ ᴍɪɴᴜᴛᴇ ʀᴇᴍᴀɪɴɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴠᴏᴛᴇ. ]
[ ᴄʜᴏɪ ᴍɪ-ɴᴀ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ sᴏ-ᴍɪ. ]
[ ᴋɪᴍ sᴏ-ᴍɪ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ʜᴀɴ sᴇᴏʟ-ʜᴡᴀ. ]
[ ᴠᴏᴛɪɴɢ ɪs ɴᴏᴡ ᴄʟᴏsᴇᴅ. ]
Never has the stretch of sixty seconds felt so long as it did waiting for the follow-up announcement.
But, nothing comes.
Tears of happiness and shrieks of excitement ring through as everyone gathers into group hugs, exclaiming words of congratulations, but soon enough, the first flicker of red lights overhead remind you that it is too good to be true.
Da-Bum's consternation only serves to intensify the collective panic as the lights dim into obscurity. "We can't just all die here!"
The blaring may drown out the screams, but the horrified looks on everyone's faces ceases to fade, guises set deeper by the shadows casted.
Kyung-Jun points a finger at Jun-Hee while taking steps backward, already set to flee. "I knew it! It should have ended with him!"
Eun-Chan's phone nearly drops out of his hold. "Only five of us should vote right? Aside from myself, Yeon-Woo, Mi-Na, and Yu-Jun are also included. Anyone else?"
"Jun-Hee needs to recast his vote too," Da- Bum recalls. "He voted for Jung-Won earlier."
Jun-Hee turns to you, uttering so lowly you can barely tell if he was talking to himself or to you. "That means you already received one less vote..."
“What do we do?!" Mi-Na cries out.
Without hesitation, So-Mi condemns you while looking you dead in the eyes.
"Kim So-Mi!" Jun-Hee shouts angrily, but it's already too late.
She strides toward you and chucks your phone straight into the very bottom of the pool before yanking the school photo out of your hand, your grip having already gone limp long ago.
Tearing it into shreds, she proceeds to fling it upward into the air above, the pieces raining down on you like joss paper they burn for the dead.
"I thought it was odd when she talked about things that didn't exist and dragged us into this mess. It was going to be her anyway. Just do it!"
"This isn't right and you know it!" Jung-Won pushes her away from you, but all you can do is stand stunned, the sirens resounding far too deafeningly in your ears.
"Fuck!" comes Seung-Bin's agitated voice. "Vote for anyone, godammit!"
"All of this happened because of me," Jun-Hee addresses the group. "Choose me... because I'm the Mafia."
Only then do you snap out of your reverie, turning to him with urgency. "What are you doing? Why are you saying something that isn't true!"
He slights you and barrels on, eyes lifeless and fixated aimlessly. Consequent words that fall from his lips are too toneless, too flat, and too run-of-the-mill, for it to be an admission—all it is is a rehearsed cover up act. "I tricked you into giving up your phones so that it would be impossible to win. Any footage left remaining, I also deleted. If we had the time, I could go on and on about the truths I have hidden and the lies I have told. All I wanted was to survive, but killing people to do so...I cant bear it anymore."
"So he confesses in the end." Kyung-Jun scoffs. "It seems I'm right again."
Disregarding your surroundings, you move toward Jun-Hee and clutch at his hand, the warmth from earlier on the rooftop having dissipated. "I can't let you do this!" you sob out, choking over your words before they can even form. "If you're doing this to protect me, then break the promise you made to yourself. Break it over and over again. I'd trade it all, including myself, to keep you, please..."
It finally dawns on you that in exchange for not smashing the promise into a thousand pieces, your heart is the one that's shattered into a million pieces.
Jun-Hee at long last slides his eyes over to yours, and through your haze of tears, you can see him holding his own back from falling.
You hide your hurt, your disappointment, and your heartbreak, and he pretends he doesn't notice.
His eyes trail over every feature of your face, etching it into memory, and you feel your heart strings snap one by one as he looks at you like it's the last time he ever will.
"You promised! That you would be here for as long as I need you. I still need you, Jun-Hee..."
[ ᴄʜᴏɪ ᴍɪ-ɴᴀ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
[ ɪᴍ ᴇᴜɴ-ᴄʜᴀɴ ʜᴀs ᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴋɪᴍ ᴊᴜɴ-ʜᴇᴇ. ]
Pounding footsteps grow fainter and fainter as the others run to safety, leaving everything else behind thoughtlessly.
Against the growing distance, you hold on until you can't anymore, until Jun-Hee's fingertips are no longer with reach, slipping away from you.
As you get pulled farther and farther away, the jade stone charm dangles in your peripheral vision and you make a wish.
One last chance at a saving grace.
Please, always come back to me.
When your tears distort the image of Jun-Hee in front of you, all you can feel is the bracelet still wound around your wrist, colored like the red string of fate, tethering you to him.
You cling to the string that feels like it's unwinding, holding on to the millions of fraying threads stretched between you two, keeping it from severing.
Gradually, he wanes from view and all that's left is a carmine inferno in your vision.
a/n. this shit took so long omfg. whoever said writing was easy can suck my nonexistent left nutsack.
"i don't get why this is even a discussion."
"oh, cmon! you don't think the conflict around it is interesting?"
"whether its interesting or not doesn't matter because this shouldn't be an existing argument. if your partner or someone you love commits a murder and there's serious evidence pointing back to them, how could you just act like it's not even there?"
"dude, you're missing the point entirely. the question is not about what you would do in that situation, it's about what you should believe."
"that's so stupid. the only factor you should need is evidence. it doesn't matter if the accused is a long time friend, your partner, or even your child. sure, your judgment on their character is still relevant, but if their fingerprints were found at the crime scene there's just no way you can objectively ignore their culpability. at that point, you should either believe your partner is guilty or at best remain undecided."
"in that case, would you say that following the evidence is morally required?"
"absolutely."
"you don't think there might be other ethical factors to consider?"
"for example?"
"even though the evidence is strong, there's still a chance they might not be guilty. imagine how it would feel like to be innocent and have no one believe you, not even your own partner! by not supporting them you run the risk of seriously hurting them on a crucial time of need. and consider what this lack of trust would do to your relationship. could you really go on after seriously suspecting–and believing–they're a murderer?"
"are you saying you'd rather ignore the crimes of your partner, even when the truth is staring you in the face, just for the sake of love?"
outside of the ethical dilemma resonating through yoon yn's headphones, the girl shifted around on her seat. her limbs felt numb from remaining unmoving for so long and, even though the only companion by her side was her bag, the compact space paid no mercy on her back.
after finding a comfortable position she set her eyes on the view outside the window. sunlight hued over the fields of grass and the occasional farm, making the rural landscape imitate a painting in motion shaped by the most gentle brush strokes. the scene felt so engrossingly peaceful, she could almost feel the gale caressing her features despite the glass separating her from the world.
yn couldn't help but thank the scene–and the long lasting battery of her headphones–for giving her something to focus on, seeing as the ride to the resort her class was directed towards had resulted to be such an otherwise tiresome one.
"YES!"
an obnoxious voice popped yn's bubble in spite of the maximum volume she'd set for her podcast. distracted by the sound she turned to glance at the very back of the bus, where the students grouped up at the last row of leathered seats frowned in unison at heo yool–who mocked them with the cheekiest grin one could imagine. judging by their sullen looks, yn figured the citizens had lost yet another round of mafia, a game they'd been playing for who knows how long.
she recalled when her classmates had urged her to join the game the moment she stepped into the bus, which she declined, prioritizing her tranquility over the headache she knew they'd give her, yet promising she'd join in the next time.
after figuring out the source of that ruckus yn set her focus back on her podcast, purposely missing the eyes of the guy she'd been avoiding to the best of her abilities for days now.
just a few rows behind her, kyung jun's eyes never left yn as she disappeared between the sea of heads flooding the bus, and his scheme of intentionally leaving the space by his side unoccupied for her came to mind, especially remembering how his grand plan backfired when that fucking basketball-star-wannabe gave up his seat for her.
that annoying prick just couldn't get the memmo, couldn't he? to him, hyun ho had always been a nuisance; a pest that treaded on yn's heels at every chance he got–even when she used to hang onto the feared delinquent's arm.
"they're so loud," kyung jun muttered. he'd been trying to settle down the bittersweet echoes of his mind since the start of that damned school trip, in vain, since the blaring voices behind him made the flare that was his temper even harder to quell than any of those memories.
luckily, he needn't lift a single finger to make the commotion stop, and he was able to get some peace of mind thanks to his lackeys acting as spokesmen for his aggravation.
on the other side of the large vehicle, kim so mi sneakily took pictures of the class president.
"hey look, isn't he gorgeous?" the vice president called, showing what was sure to be one of her new favorite pictures to her friends seated behind: park ji soo, cha yoo joon and park woo ram. "doesn't this belong in a magazine? how can he look so gorgeous?" so mi repeated with a dreamy sigh, looking at her screen.
"i will tell jun hee tomorrow that you took a photo of him," woo ram threatened with a playful smile.
"oh yeah? what if i tell yn about all the videos you have?" so mi replied, pointing at the camera that always hanged around the guy's neck.
"please do, maybe i'll finally seduce her."
"oh my god," exclaimed yoo joon, "you are so delusional."
"why?" he lifted one of his hands in response to the very serious offense.
"dude, you barely talk to her."
"woo ram, you have the same chances of getting with yn as me and yoo joon of breaking up." ji soo stated.
the guy in mention glanced at his girlfriend, seemingly unaware of the joke. "that's zero, right?" question to which ji soo only rolled her eyes.
"i don't care what you say," woo ram brushed off. "i know she's the love of my life."
"ko kyung jun!" called out so mi.
like a tiny animal trying to save itself from a threatening predator, woo ram jumped to the empty seat by his side, hiding from the vandal's peripheral as much as possible while the rest of his companions laughed.
"fuck, kim so mi!" he cried out, "you trying to get me killed?"
"relax, he's not even looking," revealed the vice president with a cheeky smile.
as if they'd rehearsed it, the four students turned around to catch ko kyung jun's eyes still set on yoon yn, and by the looks of it, he didn't have any plans to cease his staring.
"not seeing them together is kinda weird," yoo joon pointed out.
"does anyone know why they broke up?" so mi asked to her peers, who all looked at each other expecting an answer none of them had.
"whatever," dismissed ji soo, "yn is better off without him anyway."
"yeah, she's been around us a lot more since then." agreed so mi.
"i bet kyung jun barely let her talk to us."
"right? he looks like the controlling type."
"i would never treat her like that." acknowledged woo ram, making his way back into the conversation only to get beaten back down by the three others.
the time inside the bus seemed to work differently than the rest of the world. minutes and hours mixed up in a disorienting spectacle that at least seemed to follow the sun setting over the horizon.
when they finally arrived to the resort, the only source of light were the numerous lamps adorning the streets and the inviting shine of the building before them.
with the bus door finally opened, the students of class 2-3 thronged the exit with overwhelming excitement. the trip had been longer that the teacher had promised and everyone was ready to get comfortable on their temporary rooms. of course, that included yn, who unfortunately had to wait for the rest of her classmates to take their suitcases out of the loaded trunk since her luggage ended up dropping to the back during the ride.
after everyone collected their belongings, the girl was able to retrieve her case at last. it was somewhat heavy but the tiny wheels at the bottom made it easier for her to slide the valise out of the bus' compartment. taking out the retractable handle, yn rolled her suitcase for at most six steps before someone else got ahold of it.
"what are you doing?" she questioned, but the guy simply walked away while pulling her luggage along and up the stairs.
"kyung jun."
at the sound of his name, he stopped. walking towards him, yn stood right between the entrance and the suitcase-stealer.
"what do you think? i'm helping you."
"i can do it myself." yn chided, staring him down harshly.
kyung jun had received many looks like that one throughout his life. from parents, teachers, students... they were all identical, ranging from disappointment to resentment and back. he was used to it. it was his day to day, how could he not be? yet he never imagined the same eyes that used to watch him with so much endearment would scrutinize him so cruelly.
"you used to love when i carried your stuff." he reminded her, scanning yn's face for a spec of something–anything–he hoped could save him from the pain her gaze struck him with.
the girl let out an exasperated sigh. why couldn't he leave her be? why was it that, no matter how much she wanted to distance herself, he always found a way to squeeze back into her life?
yn grabbed the handle of her suitcase and pulled. she wanted to leave, to get away from his side and free herself of his piercing eyes. unfortunately his strength surpassed hers, and she was forced to stay as he kept his grip.
"can you let go?"
"yn," he asked but the girl just focused on the luggage he kept hostage. "can we talk?"
"about what?" she sneered, speaking with as much disdain her troubled feelings allowed.
"you know what."
once again, she sighed. his antics were so infuriating; always pushing down the barrier she tried to put between the two.
"not now."
"then when?" he instantly snapped back, then took a deep breath to stop his grating tone. "you always say that but then you ignore me for days."
"look, i don't have time for this." for the second time, she attempted to retrieve her case. "i promised i'd help with the preparations for the class picture, so–"
"oh, c'mon," and still, he pulled back. "since when do you care about this school-spirit-bullshit?"
he was right, yn never involved herself with whatever activities the school came up with. time and time again, they'd skipped so many classes as to not get involved with all those school projects they both deemed as meaningless, deciding to spend their mornings strolling around parks and nearby shopping districts instead. but that wasn't an option anymore, and yn needed some way to blurr the images that kept torturing her with the agonizing nostalgia of a broken relationship.
"promise me we'll talk. tonight."
"sure," for the third time, she attempted to take back her luggage. but his answer was the same.
"no, yn. promise me."
with every fiber of her being, yn summoned the last shreds of her patience and met his gaze. his eyes held her captive, beseeching her in silence to unravel the troubles he was willing to share with no one but her, and the hypnotic pull of his gaze weakened her willpower to resist.
"i promise." she reluctantly gave in.
as kyung jun finally released the carry-on, yn didn't even bat an eye before snatching it up and walking away. however, as she made her way into the resort center, she couldn't help but feel frustrated with herself for falling for his tricks. all the effort she had put into avoiding him seemed to have gone down the drain so quickly, leaving her feeling defeated.
not wanting kyung jun to catch up to her, yn rushed inside the building.
warm lights illuminated the vast entrance, composed by a lounge area with leathered sofas that accentuated the beige walls with brighter colors and a water dispenser conveniently placed next to the cushioned seats. at the center, a beautiful statue engulfed by faint blue lighting towered over everything below. the perfectly crafted marble giant was impossible to miss, looking like a still guardian watching over the resort's grounds. yet that didn't stop yn from overlooking the sign with the qr code needed for the resort's wifi and facility app.
following the arrows pointing out the way towards the elevator, yn got in and pressed the button labeled dormitories. the heavy doors slid and shut before the steel cage trembled, signaling its vertical movement. suddenly, the girl felt the air tighten inside her chest, twisting her lungs in a way that seemed to strangle them. oxygen got caught up in her throat as images of cables snapping and an imminent fall to her death plagued her mind. in, out, in, out. yn's breath increased as rapidly as tidal waves when the lights malfunctioned and in between flickers, she saw a dark figure out of the corner of her eye.
the moment she snapped her head back to take a look, a faint bell announced the door sliding open. taking in the air as steadily as she could, yn grabbed her suitcase and escaped the cage of death. frightened and disoriented, she questioned if what just concurred has been a quick fever dream or reality. and if it wasn't, why did her mind torture her like that? as far as she knew, never in her life had she experienced something that'd cause this crippling fear of high spaces. so why...?
she shook her head and brushed off the uncanny feeling, dismissing it as a consequence from the tiresome trip and forcing herself to focus on finding the room she shared with ahn na hee and kim so mi, who'd invited her with overwhelming coercion. compared to the elevator ride, figuring out her way to her dormitory was a piece of cake. the girl left her stuff in an empty corner and took the stairs down towards the gymnasium. there, instead of getting scolded by the teacher like she expected, what greeted her was a plethora of different activities performed by her classmates.
in the middle of the room, a group of students flawlessly danced to the rhythm of the songs reverberating from a large speaker, followed by lee joo young and choi mi na silently fighting for the spotlight, and being interrupted by ko kyung jun, who apparently had nothing better to do than to mess with their practice by turning off the music while his two loyal followers, shin seung bin and kim jin ha, played a very dedicated match of ping-pong.
on opposite corners of the gym, jin da bum, choi joo won, lee yoon seo and oh jung won were consecutively separated in two pairs, all conversing with their respective best friends. up on the second floor, cha yoo joon and park ji soo, who never seemed to stay away from each other, watched from above. on the stage, band members im eun chan, nam yeon woo and baek eun ha dabbled with their instruments to make sure everything was perfectly in tune. lastly, jang hyun ho and kim dong hyun busied themselves by organizing all the sport equipment laying around.
"yoon yn!" called kim jun hee from a large set of tables surrounded by the other members of the student council which, of course, included kim so mi and her friend ahn na hee.
with no sight of their teacher around yn walked stress-free to said table, although not before catching park woo ram pointing his camera right at her, which made the guy hastily turning to film someone else.
"you're here," the class president stated. "we thought you got lost or something."
"sorry, i got caught up with something." yn replied. she didn't really care about these preparations, but she did promise to help, and yn wasn't the type to use that word lightly.
"yeah! i was going to text you but we've been so busy preparing everything." so mi ranted, sprinkling salt into the wound.
"i can see that," yn commented, deciding to ignore so mi's backhanded scolding.
"what happened, though? did you really get lost?" na hee asked.
"no, i got stopped by kyung jun."
"oh, right. he was a bit late too now that I think about it."
"is that jackass bothering you again?" hyun ho, who'd come closer to the table just as yn approached, joined in and put a hand on her shoulder.
"no," yes. "everything's fine."
truth be told, yn would rather drop dead than having to deal with kyung jun. however, she knew that telling her classmates about it wouldn't lead to a positive outcome. after all, the only person who had the courage to confront the delinquent was hyun ho, and, given their history, yn was certain his involvement would only make matters worse.
in another area of the bustling gym, the noticeable trio of vandals were causing a ruckus in the corner. as they tossed a basketball back and forth, jin ha hurled the ball at kyung jun, who was too busy gawking at yn's arrival to notice. the ball smacked him right in the chest–a painful reminder of how his focus seemed to always follow after her.
"shit, my bad!" jin ha exclaimed.
their leader squatted to grab the ball at his feet and got back up only for his gaze to fix back towards the girl who constantly distracted him and, of-fucking-course, hyun ho standing right next to her, as always. the sight made his blood boil and his knuckles turn white as he clenched the basketball in his hands, while his rapid heartbeats deafened any coherent thought telling him to settle down.
seeing this, jin ha and seung bin looked at each other before the latter sighed and came closer to his friend. throwing one arm around his shoulders, he spoke:
"why don't we go outside, man? get your head out the gutter."
"yeah," kyung jun agreed, seeing seung bin was clearly trying his best to support him. perhaps he was right, some air would probably do him good right now. "let's go." was the last thing he said before disappearing through the gymnasium's exit, just in time to miss the teacher entering from the other side.
after informing the class presidents about a problem regarding the other bus full of students set to accompany them on this field trip, he left, clearly in a panic because of the unexpected turn of events.
in the meantime, most of class 2-3 remained in the gymnasium. no more than a few minutes went by before the dancing group, who now were fixing their hair and makeup while sitting on the floor, called yn over. ever since they found out about her break up, the girls had been offered her to go out again and again, an opportunity they took to invite her to join their club with not-so-subtle comments.
"oh yn, you should hang out with us more!" were the kind of utterances she always received from the class' cheerleaders.
mi na had insisted on brushing yn's hair. taking the empty stop in front of her classmate, she felt the bristles effortlessly flowing through the roots of her hair to its ends. the conversation was an amicable one. the girls often taking their time to butter up yn and saying how cool it'd be to have her in their club–until the self proclaimed hairdresser decided to dive into something she'd been curious about.
"hey yn."
"yeah?" she answered, eyes closed while enjoying the soothing sensation of the hairbrush.
"why did you and kyung jun brake up?"
mi na found herself at a loss for words when she faced the disapproving and critical stares of the entire group. why would you ask that? their glares yelled in silence, making her feel like she just made a terrible mistake.
"that's between him and i, mi na." yn abruptly ended the change of topic.
why did they break up? that's a question she'd been asked countless times ever since her classmates took note of their separation. a query yn remembered avoiding like a plague, long before this trip. only this time, a strange, guttural discomfort buried into every corner of her brain as she noticed a spec of something missing, unable to put together if the same evasion came as a reflex or because she couldn't answer it herself.
"right," mi na's shame, reinforced by the brutal glares of the other girls, took over her face as her cheeks flushed. "sorry."
luckily for her, just as her face morphed into a cherry tomato, a painful ringing roared through the speakers before the absence of light engulfed the high schoolers in deep darkness.
"c'mon! what is this?" one said.
"what's going on?" asked another.
"hey, turn the lights on!" resonated a voice from above.
a loud clang similar to a metal pipe hitting a hard surface echoed over the four walls, followed by the piercing shrieks of several people. helping themselves with the flashlights provided by their phones, the students revealed a white figure in the middle of the room.
"quit joking around." before any more screeches could be heard, hyun ho launched a basketball to the sheeted ghost, making it fall to the ground just as pathetically as your average cartoon villain.
with the precision of a well-rehearsed act, the room was suddenly lit up, revealing the mischievous culprit behind the childish prank. and lo and behold, it was none other than heo yool.
the collection of complaints from everybody present synced in a perfect expression of annoyance and the occasional insult.
"guys, listen carefully." the class clown™ gathered his classmates' attention as he stood from the ground. "i've heard that, a long time ago, a high school girl killed herself here," he explained, playing the role of a surprisingly talented storyteller. "so there's a few things you should never do: don't look at the mirror and turn around at midnight. and if someone grabs your ankle when you're sleeping, don't look down. if you break these rules," he turned to the group of dancers. "a ghost will pop up!" dashing towards them with the form of a rogish halloween scare actor, he was met with the frightened squeals of the girls.
yn, whose interest in the paranormal had never been deep enough to scare her, grabbed mi na's hairbrush and hurled it towards heo yool. an action that encouraged the rest of the class to throw everything they had at hand, along with some despicable remarks and the teasing laugh of the insufferable rascal.
defeated by heo yool's stunts, the students decided they've had enough as one by one they exited the gym.
"are you coming, yn?" so mi asked.
the girl nodded before answering, "i'll be there in a minute. i want to get some water first."
at the entrance, so mi and yn parted ways. she approached the water dispenser and took one of the cardboard cups provided by the machine. ever since the lights of the gymnasium had turned off, the girl noticed an unusual taste in her mouth that reminded her of her frightening fever dream at the elevator. she felt it at the back of her neck: something eerily creeping behind her at every given moment. was it possible that heo yool's story actually got under her skin? trying to brush off the uncanny sensation, yn took a sip from the refreshment in her hand.
"yn!"
the call startled her, making the water get caught up in her throat. she coughed and patted her own chest as the liquid scraped its way down her larynx, like a tiny bug trying to escape a spider's web. once able to compose herself, yn glanced towards the voice.
"im so sorry!" joo won panicked in a stutter, "i didn't mean to do that, are you ok?"
"im fine." she wiped the water from her lips with her long sleeve.
joo won and his companion standing behind, da bum, stared at her in silence.
"do you want anything or...?"
a simultaneous no and a yes echoed trough the entrance, followed by a confused frown from the girl and whatever silent conversation the two guys were displaying with their eyes.
"do you think maybe you could," joo won took his sweet time to mutter his next words, as if scared. "talk with kyung jun?"
"excuse me?"
what the fuck...? did kyung jun put them up to this?
"we just, well," the spokesman of the duo halted. "we gave some money to his friends a few days ago and we just don't want to bother them."
oh.
"so you bother me?"
"no, no!" da bum spoke promptly and grabbed his friend's arm, pulling him along as he took a few steps to leave. "it's ok, yn. we won't bother you."
joo won released himself from da bum's grasp and walked towards yn. "please," he pleaded, holding one of her hands tightly with both of his. "he'll listen to you."
right as her heart started beating with enough sympathy to care for their situation, the front door opened. seung bin, jin ha and kyung jun walked into the building, the latter playing around with a basketball.
the three delinquents would've kept their saunter if it weren't for yn's presence, which made the group's top dog stop in his tracks. his companions did the same and all stared at the situation unfolding right in front of them. kyung jun's eyes stayed on the hands holding yn and after noticing his threatening glare, joo won leaped away from her.
"what's going on?" asked the fearful leader.
"you owe them money?" yn countered, her eyes flickering between the trio.
"what?" the blonde one laughed, brushing off the accusation.
"they do!" joo won blamed, but instantly went back to his helpless self when met with the bullies' threatening scowls. "please, i just need it for my tuition."
the firm glare of the girl pierced through the tough act of the tamer vandal, making him drop his facade as he approached the feeble boy, closed fist in the air.
"fuck, man! we're on retreat, why are you asking us for money now?"
"yeah," seung bin joined in, defending his friend. "what are you, a loan shark? we told you we'd give you interests. give us some time, dipshit!"
kyung jun, who'd only taken the role of observer until that moment, put down the basketball he held and intervened to slap both of his lackeys' heads. "did you do sports betting again? huh?"
like scolded puppies, seung bin and jin ha faced the floor as they stepped aside.
"da bum," he called, and the guy lifted his head to stare at the bully. "did you lend them money too?"
"huh?" as kyung jun stalked closer, da bum's heart raced faster with every step. his eyes frantically scanned the room, desperately seeking any distraction from the intimidating figure slowly closing in on him. "yes. but i can wait for my money. there's no rush." with a lump in his throat, da bum braced himself for whatever was coming next.
"how much?" kyung jun's open hand grabbed the side of da bum's face, forcing the terrified boy to look right at him. "ill pay you back."
"you will?" da bum stuttered.
"of course," his grin turned into something sinister, which allowed only da bum to see because of their proximity. "in return play basketball with me, yeah?"
he faintly smacked his victim's face twice before coming up to yn. "everything's alright here, yn. see? no need for this." kyung jun reached out to hold her hand but she pulled away before any contact could be made.
was she really so revolted by him she wouldn't even let him touch her? accepting his defeat, kyung jun hid his hands inside his jacket's pockets.
"right," yn looked at da bum and joo won, who were currently being pushed around by the other two, before turning back to kyung jun. "in that case, i'll get going."
"you're not coming with me?" just as yn started to walk away, his words pulled her back in.
"i'd rather not."
"are you sure?"
with a swift nod, kyung jun signaled seung bin and jin ha to go ahead and, bringing along the poor students they were about to torment, they disappeared down the hallway.
they were left alone, just like kyung jun liked it. only them, with nothing and no one around to interrupt their precious time together.
not a single second did he stop looking into her fiery eyes, which only seemed to hold a hostility that antagonized his own devoted regard.
"it's almost midnight."
both held each other's gaze, which kyung jun took as an invitation to step towards the girl. he stopped right in front of her and, unfortunately, yn's heart betrayed her mind as she internally screamed for it to cease its raising beats.
kyung jun's hands raised to yn's face, completely forgetting her previous rejection. for a second, he thought of apologizing, since she'd made it clear time and time again how much she now despised his presence. but how could he apologize for something he was barely conscious of? he couldn't help himself, not when she was merely inches away, not with her. maybe if he insisted–if he didn't give up–she'd finally understand why staying apart was never the world's plan.
"you promised me. remember?"
his hands were close. so close he could feel his fingertips grace her cheeks, a touch so minuscule, yet enough to make his skin crawl with anticipation.
he was too close.
yn stepped back just as she felt the fleeting spark. she would be dammed if she ever allowed him to touch her again, in more ways than one. or at least that's what she told herself as she fell right into another one of his tricks. kyung jun knew her well; too well for her liking. and with such measly words she found herself helplessly cornered by her own self-discipline and morals.
fucking bastard.
up in the vast dormitory area of the resort center, different groups of people were each caught up in their own conversations, without a single care in the world or the impending sinister feeling hanging over their heads like an invisible wrecking ball about to crash and destroy every single thing they ever cared for.
in her room, lee yoon seo was finally able to lose herself in her novel when her phone pinged. slightly annoyed by the distraction she took a closer look to her home screen, which displayed an app in process of downloading.
"i told you i didn't need this." she showed the screen to her roommate.
"it wasn't me." jung won answered, just as astounded.
our perspective changes and now we observe a group of various students, all gathered in one room. the class couple, the cheerleaders and members of the student council all sharing snacks and stories between them in perfect harmony until a knock interrupted.
"come in!" allowed the vice president.
"hey guys," the door opened, reavealing hyun ho accompanied by his best friend, dong hyun, who stayed on the hallway behind him. "has anyone seen yn?"
"how come you don't know? you're always following her." mocked woo ram before taking a handful of chips from one of the various bags scattered around the room.
"you're one to talk." ji soo muttered, which provoked woo ram to throw a scrambled napkin her way.
"i'm serious." hyun ho replied, "i've tried texting her but this wifi doesn't even work."
"she told me she was going to get some water, isn't she downstairs?" just as so mi finished her sentence, one by one every phone in the room chimed.
notifications spread throughout the resort like a 14th century pandemic, resonating around every room as if imitating the never ending bells that announced the beginning of the end.
back in the gymnasium, joo won stood shaking below the basketball hoop with his friend by his side, eyes shut tight as neither dared watch the nearing hit from the ball.
"joo won, stay right there." kyung jun sneered as he prepared himself to throw. he looked up, targeting the net as he bent his knees, faked a jump, and sent the ball right into the boy's stomach.
joo won kneeled in pain, groaning and grasping his abdomen with both hands in his best attempt to soothe the aching sensation puncturing his body.
yn watched the situation unfold as she sat on the rubber gym flooring, otherwise cold if it weren't for seung bin's zip-up laid out below her. it had been kyung jun who'd instructed the blondie to give up his hoodie, since yn declined on taking his own. not a single word was heard from the girl ever since stepping into the gym as the trio took turns tormenting their two victims, until now.
"i didn't come here for this, kyung jun."
almost ten minutes had passed and she was still waiting for kyung jun to approach her and start the conversation he so adamantly pushed onto her.
"c'mon yn, let me give it one more shot."
he must've lost his fucking mind, thinking he had her wrapped around his finger to waste her time in such a way. fed up, yn got up and snatched the basketball out of his hands before throwing it away. it rolled towards jin ha, who immediately picked it up to quite the sound of the bouncing that only seemed to raise the tension of the ex-lovers' quarrel.
yn opened her mouth to give kyung jun an ultimatum, a last opportunity out of her remaining patience, when a sudden ding emitted out of her skirt's pocket. she would've payed no mind to it if it weren't for the other five identical sounds that propagated right after.
each person in the room took out their phones and faced their screens, which displayed a virtual envelope eagerly waiting to be opened.
TAP TO VIEW YOU ROLE, read the text below.
"wasn't this the resort's app?" asked jin ha, to nobody in particular.
resort's app?
she never knew about any app.
"mafia?" seung bin laughed from his spot at the floor and showed his screen. "what's this about?"
"what the fuck is this?" kyung jun mumbled with a frown, clearly confused.
yn brought one hand to the back of her neck as the abnormal sensation from minutes ago reappeared. goosebumps started breaking out throughout her skin and every cell on her body seemed to tremble uncontrollably while she stared at the little black mirror on her hand. which, as she would soon find out, reflected the last version of herself with any shred of purity.
I have a list of characters I write for and some house rules. Please make sure to read my house rules before requesting something. My inbox is always open for you. Thank you for your support :)
Please do not copy or repost my work.
All gif credits to the rightful owners and creators.
Blake Richardson
Out of love In which you’re worried because Blake spends a lot of time with other girls
Mirror* In which Blake comforts you when you feel bad about yourself WARNINGS! Poor self image
George Smith
Two separate lives under the same roof In which George is acting strange and distant and he won’t talk to you about what’s bothering him
After all this time In which you and George want to start a family
Welcome to the family In which you and George meet your new baby
Unexpected surprise In which you surprise your long distance boyfriend George, but things don’t go as planned
Reece Bibby
Head over heels In which you and Reece decide to go public about your relationship
Home made pasta awaits In which Reece comes home after touring
Love again In which Reece wants a second chance, but you’ve moved on already
Finally In which you think you and Reece are moving too slow
Promise In which Reece proposes to you, five months into your relationship
# relationship lore, first meeting, heavy infatuation, mentions of kyung jun having daddy and mommy issues
a/n. chill yall i swear im putting my whole authorussy on this
months before the school trip…
rain pours on top of the bus stop's roof. although tiny, the cover is enough to prevent kyung jun's clothes from getting even wetter.
if only he had brought an umbrella. he was in such a rush to get out of his house after yet another fight with his parents, he didn't even hear the water falling from the sky before it was too late and was already running around the streets.
kyung jun had no idea how long had passed since he stormed out, not that he cared anyway. he considered this ten times better than all the yelling at home. when he managed to ignore the cold, the little bus stop was peaceful; quiet.
or it was.
he dug in his pocket to take out a cigarette and put it in his mouth when the sound of hurried footsteps stepping on puddles distracted him. he turned his head towards the noise, immediately setting eyes on the figure sprinting towards him: a girl in winter clothes held a bag above her head as a shield from the rain while she ran in his direction. she stopped right next to him, breathing heavily and drenched in water.
kyung jun turned his attention back to his tobacco. he paid her no mind. why would he? he had enough to deal with seeing as he also fell victim to the pouring rain.
he felt the weight of the stranger sitting at the other end of the bench as he took out his lighter. however, rolling the flint wheel was useless as only a spark came out. he tried again. and again. and again, but still no flame. kyung jun's breath rose erratically and his pent-up frustration with it.
"fucking piece of shit", he sent the thing flying with as much force he could manage, making it break into pieces. was nothing supposed to work in his favor? he can't stop misbehaving like he promised his mother, he can't be the top of his class like he promised his father, he can't stop himself from lashing out right in their faces; for fucks sake he can't even light a cigarette. maybe they were right: he was worthless.
out of the corner of his eye, he saw something being handed to him. the stranger had reached her arm out with a lighter in hand. kyung jun's eyes varied from it to the face he'd been ignoring: drops of water were falling from her hair to her cheeks, she wore headphones around her neck and a lit cigarette between her parted lips, with eyes that stared at him through wet lashes, waiting for him to accept the offer.
he reached for the lighter, brought it close to him, and finally took a puff of his cigarette.
"you okay?", asked the pretty girl.
he looked back at her, seemingly taken aback by her interest but nodding nonetheless.
their interaction was cut short with a quick smile from her as she put her headphones on.
in his mind, kyung jun caught himself juggling feelings from shame to disappointment, realizing maybe he wanted somebody to ask if he was alright. he wouldn't have minded an opening to more conversation, even if it was to forget his troubles for just a few minutes. but he understood. i mean, who would care about a stranger on the streets anyway? who would care about him anyway?
the time passed as quickly as did his pack of cigarettes and now, with an empty box in his pocket, kyung jun's anger was rising once again. not because of the distress of his mind though but because of the loud music disturbing his peace.
after what felt like hours of trying to ignore the noise, he decided he had enough and aggressively waved his hand to catch the girl's attention.
"mmh?", she looked at him and removed one of the speakers.
"turn that shit off."
"excuse me?" she scoffed raising her brows.
"i said," kyung jun pointed at the headphones that were now around her neck, "turn it off. it's fucking annoying me."
she let out a teasing chuckle. was she... laughing at him right now? "fuck off. i'll listen to my music however i want."
...the fuck? his mouth opened in disbelief. this was a first. nobody, and i mean nobody, would even think of talking back to him like that.
"who do you think you're talking to?" he turned his body to her with a scowl intimidating enough to make anyone at his school go running with their tail between their legs.
"someone with no taste in music, apparently."
damn, she really was laughing at him.
kyung jun's mouth opened to fight back but no words came out. he couldn't believe it. he was stunned. did the rain wash out every threatening aspect of him?
it could be the cold, the shock, the contagious smirk of the pretty girl, or maybe the exhaustion finally catching on to him, but for whatever reason, he couldn't find it in him to say anything back. so he laughed. just slightly. some probably would consider it more of a defeated sigh. but he did.
"what?"
her smile was taunting him, provoking him to keep talking.
"nothing", yet he didn't have the energy for it, not right now. so today, he'd let it slide.
her smile shifted from cheeky to genuine when he brushed her off. as much as she enjoyed the banter, she had enough awareness not to tease any further.
"you know what," instead, she disconnected her headphones before handing her phone to the guy. "if my music is so annoying to you, show me something better."
kyung jun frowned, but a small smile graced his face, betraying his attempt at indifference.
and so he accepted her offer, for the second time that day.
minutes went by with surface-level conversation and recommended songs. it was a pleasant distraction for him, at least enough to make him miss the way his pulse merged with the beats of the tunes. they enjoyed their time together until the faint sound of wheels appeared in the distance. turning off the music, the pretty girl stood up in front of him.
oh right, the bus.
for a second, he forgot where they were.
"well, that's my ride" she announced, just seconds before said ride stopped before them.
for a second, time seemed to freeze.
the girl said something else, but whatever it was fell on deaf ears. it felt like his senses were failing him all of a sudden.kyung jun sat there, helpless and paralyzed, as he watched her walk away. a chill ran down his spine, causing goosebumps to break out all over his body. his mind was screaming at him to do something, anything, to make her stay just a little bit longer. he wanted to ask for her name, to strike up more conversation, to find out who she was and where she was going. but he couldn't bring himself to move. all he could do was see her disappear, without time to wonder what might have been.
when he came to his senses the bus was out of sight, and the empty spot on the bench felt heavier than ever.
kyung jun looked at the sky. there was not a single ray of sun to be seen, but at least the rain had finally stopped. he leaned back and just as his hands came to rest in his pockets he touched something cold. he took it out, eyes falling on a lighter. her lighter.
he could feel the beat of his heart against his ribcage. why? where did all this adrenaline come from? since when has he become so soft as to let such a flimsy little thing make his head spin and his face fire up?
"fuck", he cursed to the skies.
as the days went by, his intense but short-lived experience with that stranger remained fresh in the back of his mind. no matter how many times he tried to blur her face she was like a ghost that reappeared every time he looked away, a fading memory he couldn't fully forget.
at the back of the school's building kyung jun took the last puff of his cigarette just when the bell announced the start of classes. he dropped what was left of it on the floor at the same time his two companions dropped the innocent student they had been tormenting. they walked together to their classroom with the same enthusiasm as a kid who received a pair of socks for christmas and sat in the back row.
"good morning, class", the teacher greeted as she stood in front of the students, who immediately saluted back.
kyung jun rolled his eyes and laid down on his desk with no thought other than finding the perfect position for the three-hour nap he was about to take until his next break, wondering if his dreams would finally be undisturbed by images of the one he couldn't fail to recall again and again.
"alright," the teacher clasped her hands to get the class' attention. "before starting our lesson, i'm pleased to inform you that we have a new student coming in today and i hope you'll help them accommodate to the school."
already starting to doze off, kyung jun's eyes remained closed even after someone knocked on the door and the tutor welcomed them in. "welcome, please come in and introduce yourself."
"hello everyone, my name is yoon yn. i hope we get along well."
what the...?
his eyes shot open.
there's no way. no fucking way.
he saw the new student politely bowing at the front of the room like she wasn't the same that had been living in his mind rent free day, night, and day again.
"thank you. please, take a sit."
she walked like in slow motion towards the back of the room and, for a split second, their eyes met. the idea that he must've already fallen into a deep slumber invaded him when she sent him a subtle smile before sitting just a few sits away from him.
the teacher regathered the attention of the room and started her lesson. needless to say, his plan of breezing through the school day with a nap got ruined.
hours passed insanely slow until the bell rang through the speakers and announced a much-needed break.
having pulled up two chairs by his side, jin-ha was cracking up at something on seung-bin's phone. whatever it was, kyung jun couldn't care less. his eyes were set on the crowd surrounding the new girl as his classmates smothered her with questions and compliments.
"are you new in town, yn?"
"what school did you use to go to?"
"were you in any clubs?"
"well–", yn tries to answer in between the frenzy.
"O-M-G, you should join our cheerleading group!" interrupted mi-na.
"im not interested in any clubs, thank you" yn declined with a smile.
"oh, of course." said so-mi, "someone like you was probably on the student council, right? you can always help me and jun-hee with-"
"i'll pass. thank you, so-mi."
"woaah, the class president got rejected!" heo yool pointed out and the small crowd joined in the teasing.
in the chaos of it all, she managed to find him staring. the moment was brief, yet enough for kyung jun's heart to skip a beat.
"you know her?"
"huh?"
"do you know her?", jin ha repeated. "the new girl."
kyung jun hesitated but shook his head, "no, i don't."
"could it be?", seung bin dramatised. "does ko kyung jun have a crush?"
his friends patted his back, mocking him, and giggled in unison.
"shut up," kyung jun sighed and leaned back on his chair closing his eyes with his arms crossed, trusting they'd get the hint that his temper was better off not tested.
"he didn't say no," seung bin whispered, gaining a repressed chuckle from jin ha.
boring lessons and occasional glances between the delinquent and the new student continued throughout the day until finally the moment to get out that hellhole arrived.
by the time kyung jun had his bag over one shoulder and ready to go the class was almost empty. yoon yn was putting away her stuff without any rush as if she wasn't the only one left in the classroom.
"hey, kyung jun!" seung bin shouted from the door. "you coming or not?"
"nah," he answered without turning his eyes away from the girl. "i'll see you tomorrow."
with a shrug, seung bin left the room with jin ha following after him, not before exchanging a knowing look.
"move, nerd!" was the last thing heard from the two vandals out on the hall before they left.
kyung jun approached yn with the same caution you do a stray cat in fear it'll run away and with each step, his pulse accelerated. as the girl cleaned up her belongings, he leaned on the desk next to hers wth his hands inside his trousers' pockets.
"the uniform doesn't suit you, you know?"
she turned to him–smirking–their eyes met and, for the first time today, neither looked away.
"i could say the same for you", yn crossed her arms.
"i'd say it's better than wet clothes.", he shrugged.
"please," the girl rolled her eyes, "it was just a little rain."
"a little rain?", kyung jun repeated. "you were literally running with your bag on your head."
"you were watching me?", yn put a hand over her chest and furrowed her brows, yet her smug smile remained. "you weirdo."
"look who's talking, you fucking stalker."
"excuse me? why the fuck would i stalk you?", she pointed at him.
"you tell me," he teased, lifting his hands. "you're the one in my school."
kyung jun kept staring at yn waiting for another one of her snarky comments but instead she tightly closed her lips together.
"what?" he provoked.
unable to hold back any longer, she let out a peal of laughter which made kyung jun's eyes widen as much as his own smile. he couldn't help it, her laugh was contagious and the situation was amusing. randomly meeting someone and obsessing over them to later find out they just enrolled in the same school as you is something you would only see in movies; or fanfiction.
yet here they were.
"nothing", yn smiled, finally gathering her stuff and putting her backpack over her shoulder, ready to leave.
leave?
flashes of the day he thought he'd never see her again flooded kyung jun's mind. he couldn't bear it. to someone else, this might seem extreme; desperate. now that they were classmates he'd most likely see her every day, so why even panic in the first place? but maybe, just maybe, he was desperate. to him, seeing her leave felt devastating. like a reminder of the day his whole body failed to even ask her name. but if the universe saw it necessary for them to meet again, that meant he wasn't supposed to let her go, right?
kyung jun clumsily opened his backpack and took out the trinket he'd been carrying around since that rainy day, handing it to her.
yn stared at him with her eyebrows wrinkled.
"here", the guy insisted, slightly shoving the lighter toward her.
"why?"
"'fuck you mean why? it's yours."
"i told you to keep it. you didn't hear me?"
"oh," he felt what seemed like a heatwave run through his neck and ears. "i guess not."
"all that shit you gave me about my loud music and look at you." she mocked.
the guy lowered his head. he would have run away right then and there to avoid any more embarrassment if it wasn't for the little pride he still had.
"hey, uh..." she paused. "sorry, what's your name?"
all this time and he still hadn't introduced himself? fuck, he really couldn't do anything right, huh?
"ko kyung jun."
"right. so, kyung jun, since it's such a nice day out i was wondering if you'd be free to show me around?"
like on queue, sunshine started squeezing through the window’s blinds.
he wasn't sure if it really was the world roaring at him to see the signs or if she just happened to take pity on him, but whatever it was he felt relieved, and his anxiety washed away the moment he lifted his head to look at the girl with her arm extended.
this was it, wasn't it? the opportunity he keept missing?
how many times will she have to reach out until you take the chance, dumbass?, screamed the universe.
"sure", kyung jun uttered. "i can do that."
she offered her hand, and for the final time, he accepted.
Author’s Note: If you choose to believe in canon, then the story ends after the first part just like how the drama concluded. Everyone will, once again, be transported back to the beginning, unable to escape from the game's cycle. But, if you would like to see how I imagined the ending and the official one for my story, the second part is my take on this drama. The original conclusion wasn't enough for me and I've never been a fan of open endings so I offer alternatives. You can choose the ending you believe in! Finally, your love and support have meant more than I can ever express. Writing this has been a journey, but knowing that you all have been there from the beginning, reading, commenting, and motivating me until now has made every moment worthwhile! This is also a temporary goodbye until any series interests me enough to write for it but I’ll still be on here occasionally! More than anything, I hope that just like the conclusion of this story, you all will experience your own happy endings and live in them forever ♡
𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜 : 𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗬 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗗
You were neither here nor there, suspended in a quiet, all-encompassing darkness where only a faint flicker of consciousness stirred, delicate and wavering.
A brilliant flash of blinding white light pierces your closed eyelids, creating tiny specks of light like clustered stars against the dark night sky of your blackened vision.
It was as though your perception returned, fully cognizant, trapped in a body that refused to obey, unable to rectify the difference in sentience.
You're aware of yourself.
But you're also aware of the numbness.
And the voices.
Then, your eyes finally spring open.
Only for the memories to come flooding back full force.
Each remnant hits you like a tidal wave, currents continuously flowing, bringing with it searing sensations that chill you to the bone, like a person soon to drown at sea, prisoner of a tempest.
Is this the aftermath of death?
Your fingers twitch, desperate for something, anything, to anchor you, at last finding something cold, smooth, and unyielding.
You grasp it tightly, the chill spreading from your fingertips to seep into your warm skin and freezing it cold, sending tendrils of ice up your spine.
Only momentarily do you feel tethered to reality before the unsettling truth and impending dread settles.
You're not floating freely in the void.
You're trapped.
Encapsulated.
A transparent, seamless, glass-like prison holds you captive within.
It is only then that you notice your finger—an oximeter, displaced, a silent casualty of your frantic movements.
Vital signs on the device's face fluctuate as you try to orient yourself, the sole telltale marks of vivacity.
Every breath.
Every heartbeat.
Are you truly living?
Or are you merely alive?
As you struggle to sit up, the world spins for a moment, your vision blurring at the edges. It doesn't take long before you feel it—something pulling, tugging at your limbs. A tangle of thin, white wires encircle your arms and legs, clinging to you like invisible chains.
Cold, sticky pads are pressed against your forehead and scalp, presence so foreign and intrusive that it becomes discomforting. The electrodes, at least a dozen of them, were attached to you with clinical precision, small metal circles connected to the wires, each one sending a faint, electric hum with your every move.
Wasting no more precious seconds, with frantic urgency, you peel the round pads off, slowly at first then gradually yanking at the bothersome adhesives that kept you strung onto something unwanted.
After you rid of the unwelcome objects, you simply sit there, palms pressed against your forehead hoping to keep the pressure behind them at bay, as though the touch can steady your rapidly swirling thoughts.
What was going on?
The discarded wires hang limply by your sides like discarded lifelines.
Before you know it, twin trails of blood come pouring out of your nose, reminding you of the same red from your subconscious, blooming like overgrown flowers blossoming from your midsection, color like ink spreading and spreading, refusing to stop until it dyed everything crimson.
You tilt your head upward, hoping to stop the epistaxis.
Your eyes widen as you meet the faces of your peers, seated all around in the same capsules in two rows facing one another.
The very same classmates who played the life or death game with you, now all unconscious.
But, they remained alive.
You scan every reaction on their faces, but no one seemed at peace.
Grimacing.
Disturbed.
Suffering.
At last, your eyes land on Jun-Hee, situated at the far end of the room diagonal to you.
You overestimate your strength, and upon springing up to head toward him, your legs wobble from the effort.
Despite that, you finally make it to him and try to shake him awake.
"Jun-Hee..."
When he doesn't come to, you raise a trembling hand toward his face, finally being able to touch it as you had so desperately wanted to at the end of the game and at the end of your life.
The warmth of his skin along with his even inhalations calm you, and you release a breath you weren't aware you were holding.
Behind you, there's a soft click, followed by the unmistakable sound of light switches being flicked on, one after another, a quick, mechanical rhythm that echoes through the vicinity. The sound is sharp, intrusive, and it draws your attention like a magnet. You turn your head, and instantly, the harsh glare of fluorescent lights floods your vision, bathing everything in a sterile, unforgiving light. The bulbs buzz feebly, casting long, cold shadows across the room, the contrast of white brightness making everything far too baring.
Your eyes dart around, taking in the unfamiliar space. The walls are starkly empty and clinical, an unsettling mix of gleaming white surfaces and utilitarian metal fixtures.
Just as quickly, your gaze is pulled toward something far more jarring—a massive screen dominating one of the walls, its callous blue glow washing over the room. The display is impossibly large, covering nearly the entire surface of its partition, and it pulses with activity, each detail playing out like a twisted reflection of reality.
On the screen, a series of small, moving images flash before you of profile pictures, every single portrait you can easily recognize. Below each face, a status marker hovers, blinking in rapid succession.
The setting feels inconceivable, oppressive, and the deeper you look, the more confusing it becomes.
This isn't just a room.
Rather, it's a control center, a place where everything is being monitored, tracked, and calculated.
And you?
You're just another figure in the system, one of many, waiting to be told what happens next.
Some names are highlighted in green, others in red, each one a stark reminder of the stakes. The images flicker with unnerving regularity, updating in real-time, as though the very air around you is alive with a constant flow of information—alive with the sound of decisions being made, lives being counted, and fates being sealed.
It pains you to watch everything that you had experienced.
How many lifetimes had there been between then and now?
The scrolling automatically stops at your own player profile.
The only one marked in green.
The only one deemed complete.
What did it mean?
You close your eyes and shake your head.
You couldn't do this alone.
Pivoting around, you make to head toward Jun-Hee again, but before you can so much as take three steps forward, a deep voice echoes from your back and you still.
"Leave him alone. If you wake him while he's on the server, he could fall into a coma."
Reluctantly, you pivot around again, coming face to face with two vaguely familiar people.
A middle-aged man and woman who bore a resemblance to...
"Do you remember us?"
The woman takes a single step toward you, away from the brilliance of the lights.
Out of the shadows, it finally clicks.
"Mr. Park and Mrs. Kang?" you ask incredulously as the two nod.
"You're...Se-Eun's parents. Why are you here? What is all this?"
Kang Ji-Yoon ignores your questions, opting for, "How was the game?" With hands behind her back, she approaches you, expressionless. When close enough, she brushes your hair out of your face and you eye it warily, the action lacking warmth and sincerity, bordering on condescension. She leans in more, eyes taciturn. "Was death scary and painful enough?"
"W-what are you talking about?" you stutter. "What have you done?" your voice takes on an accusatory tone, feet shuffling backward away from her.
The screen suddenly blinks red, a chart of graphed vitals pulled up in focus.
You glance to the side and see Kyung-Jun, So-Mi and Woo-Ram, the three whose names were highlighted now frowning, matching their deteriorating status on exhibition.
"Don't worry," she dismisses off-handedly, carelessly. "They're just asleep is all."
"Why aren't they awake like I am?"
"They're unconscious for now, but the agony is real."
You stare in disbelief, not knowing how to wrap your mind around the fact that this was human invention, not divine intervention.
"All of this...was only a game?" you barely get the words out, voice nearly inaudible.
Kang Ji-Yoon resumes her walking, circling around you like a predator does to its prey. "You guys haven't been here for long, but you played dozens of times already. Time moves at a different speed within the game. We had it set so Jung-Won would always be the last one standing, but this is the first time you've won. What did you do to Jung-won that she helped you?" The woman is so different from that of which you met countless times before that you could hardly believe it, the contrast in impressions disorienting. "Tell me. I must know, so I can fix it. I only woke you up for this reason alone."
"That's what you're fixated on?" you emphasize, bitterness and hurt clear in your words. "Why on earth are you doing this? Why?!"
"In the world my daughter created, you all must pay the price."
"For what?"
"Have you still not learned your lesson?" Ji-Yoon steps ever closer, mincing her words through clenched teeth. "For bullying my innocent Se-Eun. For believing the groundless rumors and driving her to her death!" she lists with hatred. "That's your crime. Your classmate had died—horrifically! So why didn't anyone take responsibility? All they feared was backlash alone." She laughs without any humor behind it. "You all use the same excuses: It was a joke. It was a misunderstanding. I don't know anything," she mimics, "but is it a joke if it ends in death?"
"Then, is this a joke to you too?" you dare to question. "Our lives are now at your mercy to experiment, and our suffering, playthings for you to relieve your resentment?"
Not expecting you to respond, Mrs. Kang glares at you, lips quivering in suppressed frustration. "Just like you all made mistakes, perhaps we have too. But we're not like you kids who are unable to admit to what you had done. No one. Not a single one of you," she repeats. "Hence, this game was created. The pain that our Se-Eun felt, we knew you had to feel it too. We wanted to show you the consequences of your actions." She raises a hand, patting your head as if you were nothing more than a living doll. "Although I know you and Se-Eun were close, you didn't save her when it mattered!" her voice pitches higher and higher. "Why did you let her die?" She removes her hand in disgust, opting to point an accusatory finger in your face. "You're no different from them. Their memories are wiped each time. They'll never get used to the torment for it feels fresh every playthrough. For eternity, you all can live in this fatal world."
"Mrs. Kang," you get out, still using honorifics, nearing tears. "I also miss Se-Eun so much. Do you think I wouldn't have tried everything I could to stop her if I had understood at the time? Since then, all I've wanted to tell her was that she endured so much on her own—that I'm sorry I didn't know." You swipe at your face as your eyes spill rivulets of water down the curve of your cheeks. "There are things about us we've kept from each other, but can you tell me if there's a friendship where the parties involved bear their heart and soul to one another? Sometimes, there are burdens we can't share—that we don't dare to share." You look up at her, pleading through a haze of tears. "But since we've already reached this point, let me bear that weight then. If someone must take responsibility, I'm willing for it to be me. I'll do anything if you set the others free, please..." you implore.
You swallow down the lump in your throat as the older woman in front of you remains resolute.
Your knees give out before your resolve does and you suddenly find it hard to breathe.
"Don't fight it," comes Mr. Park's voice as he helps you up off the floor, eyes much kinder than his wife's. "Your subconscious is still tied to the game even if your physical body is not."
"I'll fight it to the end," you respond with hardened resolve. You turn to him, pleading, "Sir, Jung-Won told me at the end that death was her way of compensating me. It was something she chose in exchange for forgiveness, so that when we meet again, our friendship could go back to the way it was in the beginning: untainted, trusting, and lasting." Twin tears drop simultaneously from your eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm sorry for not knowing," you apologize in succession. "No matter what has transpired between us, I hope to be her friend in every lifetime." You can slowly feel your strength draining as you sway on your feet. "If virtual Se-Eun, the one that you both created, can forgive me, do you still think it is so impossible for the real Se-Eun to be unable to find it in her to forgive me too?"
Before you can hear a reply, the lull of sleep like a shift in the cosmic fabric that tugs at your very essence, draws you in and under again, the stars that had twinkled behind your eyelids when you first awoke now ceasing to shine, warping like the dying light flickering out in the vast emptiness of space.
𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗜 : 𝗟𝗜𝗙𝗘 𝗚𝗢𝗘𝗦 𝗢𝗡
"Don't tell me you're having a change of heart?" Kang Ji-Yoon probes in incredulity, tone scolding. "After everything we've done?!"
Park Joon-Seok guides you back to your chair safely, positioning you properly before turning to look at his wife, sighing at the expression on her face.
"Yoon-Seo and Seol-Hwa having discovered Jung-Won's existence is because she helped by changing the settings to recover their memories."
Ji-Yoon crosses her arms, tilting her head to the side as she eyes him warily. "What are you trying to say?"
Joon-Seok lowers his head, hands stuffed into his pockets. "Self-annihilation was never an option. We didn't plan for it to play out this way. Jung-Won actually took on the persona of our Se-Eun, voluntarily choosing to save the kids of her own accord. That has to mean something—"
"Get a grip!" she cuts him off, clutching at his forearm. "Jung-Won's not our daughter!" Ji-Yoon's fingernails dig into her husband's suit jacket, wrinkling the once creaseless fabric. "It's simply an error caused by faulty coding."
"Honey, look..." Joon-Seok starts to put his hand over hers but she slaps it away, offended.
"There's nothing to discuss further!"
He opts for placing his hands on her shoulders instead, and this time, she doesn't reject the gesture, though her body is still tensed, shoulders square. "It wasn't just an error. I think it's time we came to terms with the facts." He squeezes her shoulders, hoping to bring some sense into her. "It was human will..."
Her head snaps up at him. "Are you seriously being swayed by this girl's words? Because of her friendship with our daughter?!"
"What if—as she said—like Jung-Won, Se-Eun doesn't want this game either? What if getting revenge is only what we want?"
Ji-Yoon shakes her head at Joon-Seok, sorely disappointed. "No," she rejects, turning her head to the side to avoid looking at him any further. "We have a long way to go. We're not done yet. Either you're with me or you're not."
He drops his hands from her shoulders and instead steps closer, trying to gain her attention once more. "Whatever happened in the past, you can't ignore that no matter how many rounds we've tested, they always risked their lives to save a friend." Seeing as she's about to retort, he pushes on, not letting her interrupt. "Maybe not all of them," he acquiesces, "but some of them felt bad for what happened to Se-Eun. We've seen enough to give them a chance. Let's them go, hmm?" Hesitantly, Joon-Seok wraps his arms around her, trying to convince in favor of the morale road.
"I can't do that!" Ji-Yoon shoves him backward, hands pounding at his chest. "Move!" she screeches to no avail. "Move out of the way!" In a final burst of strength, she extracts herself from his embrace. "What about our Se-Eun?" Tears automatically well up at the mention of their beloved daughter. "Whether we keep these kids or let them go, we won't be able to get her back." In a much lower voice, she utters, "Se-Eun is gone forever."
"She's not gone."
"How can you say something so hurtful?" His wife looks at him agonizingly. "Have you forgotten her already?"
"Do you think I can?" Joon-Seok retorts. "But we have to remember that she lives on in our hearts. Always."
"That's just a way to comfort ourselves. When will we stop living in illusions of happiness?" Ji-Yoon gazes up at him, questioning, the fight in her slowly diminishing as she takes in his genuine sorrow.
"We have to learn to let go eventually." Joon-Seok cradles her hands in his tenderly, their shared grief mounting in the space between them. "No one's saying we must right now, and we can choose to be in it forever, but happiness is a decision we make. Why are we keeping ourselves away from choosing it?"
"I don't think we have a choice."
"When will we stop making others live in suffering to lessen our own?" he turns the question back on her.
"It's helped, has it not?" she still stubbornly rebuffs.
"Has it for you?" when he receives no response, he barrels on. "It hasn't for me." He gazes around the room in succession, taking in the young faces. "All this has brought me is only guilt on top of misery." Joon-Seok finally looks back at his wife while speaking, "These kids are other parents' precious children also. What Se-Eun is in our eyes, they are even more in their fathers' and mothers' eyes. Why are we putting them through the turmoil we went through? As parents, we should know better than to wish this feeling upon anyone else."
"And just who will understand us?" Ji-Yoon verbalizes, tears cascading down her face.
"We can understand one another," he answers without hesitation. "I'll always be here for you, and you can always be there for me."
"I can't continue on like this," she says through broken sobs. "You can't convince me that we'll be alright."
"If Se-Eun could, what do you think she would tell us?" Joon-Seok turns Ji-Yoon's shoulders toward the picture of their daughter framed atop the glass table in the middle of the room. "Se-Eun ah," he calls out to empty air. "Is this what you wanted to see?"
Her breath hitches in her throat as the frame falls over with a thud, the answer as clear as day.
"Se-Eun—"
Before she can say more, he raises his hand behind her and hits her at her neck's pressure point and she crumples into his waiting arms.
"I'm sorry it has to come to this, but it isn't what I want to see either. We should stop while we still can." He wraps an arm around her shoulder and leads her toward the exit. "We have to be parents Se-Eun will be proud of. So that one day when we reunite once again, we can stand proudly in front of her with no guilt, no remorse, and no regrets, only meeting her with our dearest smiles."
When you open your eyes again, Se-Eun's parents are nowhere to be seen, the large screen having gone black, no signs of a signal on the once busy display.
Faint sirens wail in the distance, its mournful cry slicing through the air, but it feels miles away, as if muffled by a wall of thick glass. The city's pulse hums in the backdrop, life bustling, indifferent, carrying on.
The glaring lights have since dimmed, their soft glow retreating like the fading afterglow of a sunset, leaving the room cloaked in a quiet, muted darkness. Shadows stretch long across the floor, curling around the edges of every corner, creeping over the slumbering figures of your classmates.
They lie in stillness, bodies relaxed, and faces softened by the calm of sleep. The rhythmic rise and fall of their chests is the only movement in the room, a gentle testament to the peace they have found in their dreams.
Instinctively, your attention drifts toward Jun-Hee, drawn by an unspoken pull. The moment your eyes meet his, warmth pervades every nerve in your body.
His dark brown eyes lock onto yours with a deep intensity, the weight of his stare reaching through the space between you, bridging the chasms in your heart formed by the distance of endless partings.
For a heartbeat, everything else in the room blurs, leaving only the connection of your gazes, as if the world itself has paused.
A sudden rush of air fills your lungs but you can't breathe. Your heart skips a beat, and without thinking, you spring from your chair, your legs scraping against its edge in sharp protest, but you push yourself toward him. Each step feels urgent, automatic.
Across the room, you see him move too. His pace is measured, deliberate, his eyes never leaving yours, as if drawn by the same force that has you in motion.
The space between you seems to narrow with every stride, the air around you thick with anticipation. His presence, calm yet unyielding, draws nearer, and with each passing second, the expanse between you both becomes less of a gap and more of an unspoken inevitability.
You have no clue who reaches who first, but it ceases to matter as you throw yourself into his expectant embrace, winding your arms around his neck as he draws you in closer.
Your hearts are beating in sync where your chests are pressed together and you can't help the tears that flow, soundlessly dropping from your eyes, amassing to blend with the blue of his sweater like an oasis of comfort where you can rest forever.
"Tell me I'm not dreaming. Tell me that you're still here with me. Tell me that you're here to stay," you recite in a rush into the juncture of his shoulder, choking over your own words.
"This is real, but even if it wasn't," he squeezes you tighter, pressing his face into the side of yours as he whispers in your ear sentiments from the bottom of his heart, "I'd live through hundreds of illusions if it means I can have even a fraction of your heart in every one of those realities."
Author’s Note: Another chapter to start the week off with! The next one is my favorite and I can't wait to share it! Happy reading and see you all in the coming update ♡
The world outside was a blur of gray, skies heavy with the weight of an incoming storm, the streets shimmering beneath the water's sheen.
Rain pitter patters against the glass doors of the school entrance, and you watch as the drops roll down, playing a game with yourself to see which one would reach the bottom first.
Your eyes trace the path of a single droplet, racing its way to the base. It moved quickly, like it knew where it was going, journey already determined.
For a fleeting moment, you felt connected to it—a small thing carried by forces it could neither understand nor control.
You let your gaze drift to another droplet beside the previous. This one, however, moved at leisure. It was slower, like it could afford all the time in the world to figure about where it was going, and you wonder if it would join with one of the other drops or keep going, continuing forward at its own pace, all alone.
Pressing your fingertip to the cold surface, you draw along with the trail that the raindrop streaks, following its non-linear descent as it winds its way downward, seemingly struggling against gravity.
The drop splits into two at a particular curve and you ponder at the ease of separation.
Finger hovering, you lean forward, trying to decide which of the two to follow as they slither in opposite directions.
On the left, it is longer, winding and hesitant. The right one was a quick drop, straight and definite. Blinking, you feel a strange pull to the left, toward what is less clear.
Subconsciously, the leftmost one lingers in your mind, and in that inadvertent choice, it winds up reaching the end of the glass paneling first.
The rain only seemed to grow heavier, tapping a staccato rhythm, the sound somehow both soft and insistent, like the murmur of a secret.
With your forehead against the cool glass, you stare at the droplets as they gather and scatter, running into one another before pulling apart, reforming only to separate again.
How easy it is for things to slip away, unnoticed.
How easy it is for one moment to disperse into a hundred different ones with barely any interference or effort.
The spectacle in front of you fogs up with every breath but you cease to move.
You didn't quite know what you were anticipating, but it felt like waiting for something that wasn't going to show up—for something that wasn't going to stay forever.
Maybe the thought laid in the melancholy of the rain or the anemoia of the atmosphere.
Maybe it was because of the rain drops themselves, so fragile, so temporary.
Maybe it was premonition.
A sudden gust of wind rattles the door behind you, and you instinctively turn to the sound.
"Seol-Hwa?"
You recognize the familiar voice as Jun-Hee walks toward you. Although you haven't known him for long at the moment, he was still one of your cousin's closest friends, and you wanted to get to know him better.
"Oh! Jun-Hee! What are you still doing here?"
"I had a student council meeting," he tells you as he stands across from you, tilting his head. "But what about you?"
"Waiting for Hyun-Ho." You roll your eyes, but it's more fond than anything. "He doesn't want me walking home alone but he's always late staying after for extra practice."
Jun-Hee chuckles lightly at the expression on your face.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
He tries to suppress his smile but fails.
You cross your arms across your chest and stick a foot out, tapping it against the floor, lips pressed together.
"Is my misery funny to you?" you tease.
He puts both hands up and shakes them in a show of refute. "That's not it."
"Then, what is it?"
"Cute."
"Huh...?"
"You're cute when you get angry—or at least try to. It's like watching an upset kitten."
The expressions on your face grow ever more animated by the second but his brown eyes are warm, remaining unchanged, with that half-smile he always seemed to give you when he catches you off guard—the same half-smile that had always made you feel both seen and invisible all at once.
"I-I'm not cute!"
Jun-Hee looks to the side, trying to hold back his laughter as your face heats up, a pink hue dusting the tops of your cheeks.
"Opinions are allowed, you know?" he continues to poke fun at you.
"Alright that's enough of that sir, time for you to go home."
You grab his arm and tug him toward the door as he chuckles, letting you drag him along easily, only stopping as a strong breeze blows a gust of wind between the slight opening between the cracks in the door, sending you shivering.
Jun-Hee pulls out a folded umbrella and takes your hand resting by your side, putting it against your palm to fold your fingers around it. "Knowing Hyun-Ho, he won't have one on him, but he's strong enough to fight off anything, so I'm not worried about him getting sick on the way home." He tilts the umbrella toward you, a subtle offering. "But I am worried about you."
As hard as you try to tamper down the fluttering in your stomach, your heart refuses to still, stuttering unsteadily like the rain dripping down the window—slipping, wavering, falling.
You look up at him in shock. "What about you then?"
He smiles down at you, pointing a finger up the road. "I live only a few blocks from here, I'll be fine."
"But—"
He ruffles your hair as he dashes outside, backpack raised atop his head, a makeshift cover. Jun-Hee turns back around and waves, shouting over the pouring rain, "See you tomorrow, Seol-Hwa!"
Despite the touching gesture, you felt an odd tightening in your chest as water from the sky continues its descent, gradually hazing his image in your sight as if this was more than just a simple parting—as if you had already seen the split that was coming, not knowing in which ways your paths will diverge, akin to the falling raindrops.
"See you tomorrow, Jun-Hee."
Will I ever get to see you again?
You've protected me time and time again, yet why is it that I can't protect you—not even once?
The events of last night come surging back and you nearly crawl in your haste toward the door, barely registering your friends around you.
"Seol-Hwa!" comes Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won's worried voices behind you as you throw the door open but you don't bother to slow your pace, seeing Hyun-Ho stopping the two with an outstretched hand in your peripheral vision.
"Leave her be."
You wipe your streaming tears with the back of your hand as you run aimlessly, no clue as to which direction led to the pool from your starting point, but that didn't matter.
All that mattered was that you can get to Jun-Hee.
The hallways are a blur—whispers of your thoughts swirling like smoke and the hum of the glaringly bright fluorescent lights overhead, but all you can hear is your heartbeat, thudding, rapid, and disjointed, still echoing in your ears.
You couldn't wrap your head around it. There had been screams, a splash, then silence.
The pool.
The water.
Where was he now?
You stumble forward, steps sluggish and eyes unfocused.
He's waiting for me—just as he always has.
As tears blur your vision, you're forced to look down at your feet, one tripping over the other, all sense of balance off kilter.
Paying no mind, you run straight into someone's chest. Only then do you pause, breathing raggedly, swaying on your own two feet. Hands come up to firmly grip at your upper arms as they steady you, holding on, trying to tether you to the present.
The first words that come out of your mouth make no sense, but it's all that your heart knows—the one person who would always be there for you. "Jun-Hee...?"
"He's not here anymore."
Why must you be reminded?
This isn't the reality you wanted to wake up to.
You finally look up, a single teardrop falling from your left eye. "Yes he is," you whisper weakly. Blinking, you try to refocus, but your vision swims, heart pounding harder like you can still feel his presence. "He's waiting for me," you mumble, eyes glazed as you inch backward, mind half-drowned.
Kyung-Jun's lips tightened. He was used to being hated, avoided, and feared, but being ignored is unfamiliar. There was something about the vacant look in your eyes, the way you were moving soullessly, that made him pause.
It gnawed at him.
He wasn't used to people walking past him like he didn't exist.
He wasn't used to you walking past him like he didn't exist, in search of the ghost of someone else.
"Jun-Hee's dead!"
Kyung-Jun's sharp voice does nothing to snap you out of your trance, but it hurts all the same. "No...no..." you start repeating, shaking your head. "No!" Attempting to remove yourself out of his grip is futile, even as you squirm with all your might, fighting against both his hold and words.
"He's gone! Why can't you accept it?"
"I don't want to."
It shouldn't be this easy to read Kyung-Jun, but it is anyway. Although his words are harsh, his eyes are flitting back and forth between your own, the crease between his eyebrows betraying his veiled concern.
"You need to. Once you see it, you'll have to."
"Even if I see it, I still won't. I never will."
"You can't live in that fantasy forever," he reminds, his face so close to yours now, his breath harsh against your skin. "He's not coming back. Not today. Not ever."
"Then, I'll go to him. Today...or forever." Your eyes search his face, unfocused, like you were seeing past him and not through him.
Kyung-Jun's eyes flicker, and for a brief second, something close to regret flashes through. He wants to say more, to make you understand, but the tightness in his chest— the way his pulse races with frustration— keeps him from speaking.
You didn't get it.
You wouldn't get it.
With the last ounce of strength in your trembling hands, you finally manage to push his away, although with your current state, the harsh intent falls short, and Kyung-Jun pretends as though it doesn't, letting you cast him aside.
He releases you, hands falling to his sides in what he tries to convince to himself is disgust.
You don't move at first, eyes still locked somewhere in the middle distance, but the moment you step away, your head spins and you stumble.
Kyung-Jun reflexively shoots an arm out, fingers moving toward your wrist to steady you, but in your desperation, you pull your arm away with a sharp and instinctual yank, the contrasting movements sending your bracelet flying, ultimately landing on the floor.
You stare lifelessly as the red threads unravel, frayed ends splintering off in different directions.
Without saying another word, you kneel down to pick it up, cradling it in your cupped hands, the weight of the hanging jade stone much heavier than it did last night.
"Why are you like this?" Kyung-Jun probes lightly, much softer than the tone with which he spoke earlier. "You're still alive."
You don't notice.
You never noticed how close he was, how his words dripped with something more than anger.
Kyung-Jun's chest tightens as he watches your fingers graze the string, trembling as they curl around the delicate woven strands.
His throat clenches.
His whole body was on fire with something he couldn't comprehend.
The emptiness inside him was suddenly too much. Too raw.
Getting back on your feet, you tuck the bracelet into your skirt pocket and fix him with a stare devoid of any emotions.
Shaking your head, you get the last word in, to a flash of pain and hurt reflecting in Kyung-Jun's eyes. "I died last night...and you were the killer."
And then—without another word—you turn on your heel to walk away, leaving him standing in the hall, torn between wanting to stop trying and wanting to follow.
But, Kyung-Jun doesn't move.
And you don't look back.
You stand frozen outside the glass doors, breaths coming in shallow, uneven gasps. The sun had just begun to climb over the horizon, casting pale, pink light across the pool, reflecting off the water's surface, still and peaceful.
But it didn't feel peaceful. It felt wrong.
Everything felt wrong.
Your hands shake as they hover just inches from the door handle but you can't bring yourself to touch it, knowing you'd rather face anything than the aftermath that awaits you on the other side.
You couldn't go inside.
Not yet.
You weren't ready.
Your mind is a whirl of frantic thoughts, none of them making sense, all of them circling around the same unbearable truth that everyone else except you seemed to be able to fully grasp even though it had been there all night—growing darker and heavier with every passing hour.
He was gone.
The truth hits you again, stinging as if you had only realized it for the first time.
You had tried to deny it last night and even this morning, even if avoiding the acknowledgment made your feet feel like lead and your stomach twist in a way that bordered on the brink of collapsing.
There is nothing else but the sound of water lapping gently against the tiles, yet the silence had screamed at you. It still screams at you.
He's gone.
You thought—no, hoped—that maybe you'd wake up and find everything to be just nightmare.
But it wasn't a dream. It was real. Too real.
You close your eyes and bite your lip, trying to stop the onslaught of tears accumulating at the corner of your eyes.
You couldn't lose him. Not like this. Not in a way that you couldn't fix.
Drawing all of your strength, you pull the doors open with a soft whoosh as bright light slants across against your face from the ceiling high windows, a complete contrast to the darkness that enveloped the space last night.
When you finally step forward, your feet drag as if they weigh a thousand pounds and the lump in your throat refuses to disappear.
The sunlight had risen fully now, turning the water into a glittering, sharp expanse that makes your eyes sting.
The strong smell of chlorine permeates around you, sharp and unmistakeable, cutting through the morning air. The chlorine didn't mask anything; it just laid over it, as if to hide a truth too ugly to bear, as though it sought to try and erase something that couldn't be cleaned. It felt heavier and thick—suffocating.
For some reason, you can only imagine the lingering metallic scent of blood.
Before you can so much as take a few steps forward, you can already spot Jun-Hee's lifeless body floating atop the water's surface, splayed out face up in its midst.
You stop short, breath hitching in your chest, sharp and jagged as if someone had taken the sharpest point of a blade, flaying your heart layer by layer.
He wasn't supposed to be like this.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
He wasn't supposed to be dead.
Your legs tremble as you take a hesitant step toward the pool, then another, and another, neither able to stop nor turn away.
It isn't until you're almost at the edge that your knees buckle, and you have to catch herself against the metal railing, vision blurring. Passingly, you wonder if you were going to faint.
But then you see it: the pool ladder, the way the water swirled around it in small, gentle ripples, the way his hair spreads out, black and damp against the smooth surface of the water, the way his eyes—his once warm eyes—stared up at nothing.
Your stomach churns.
Bile rises in your throat and you clasp a hand to your mouth, in denial—in grief.
You don't know how long you stand there before finally being able to move again.
Only when you jump into the shallow pool, wading your way toward him that your defense mechanism of denial fails, your breath caught in your throat as though you too had drowned, the water rippling in waves between the two of you.
The sound of water splashing echoes in the empty space, devoid of anyone else aside from you and Jun-Hee.
You belatedly wonder if the tears you've shed could fill this entire pool, so that he could float in the oceans of your affections rather than sink in the cold waves of betrayal.
Although your wet clothes continue to weigh you down, you push through it and manage to pull him up and over the poolside edge, leaning his back against the wall as you sit beside him.
His body goes limp and his head falls onto your shoulder, making the water droplets from your hair trickle down, splashing onto the pendant of his bracelet.
He's still wearing it.
You reach out your hand, warm fingers touching his cold ones and hold on tight, almost as if it was possible to will him back to life.
"Jun-Hee, I'm so sorry," you whisper to the air. "Hearing is the last sense to disappear when someone passes, and I know it may be futile, much too late, now to say what I've kept in my heart all this time, but I want you to know that you meant the world to me— you always will mean the world to me. I should've told you when I had the chance that I—"
You never knew. You never knew how I watched you, how every word you spoke made the world lighter and my days brighter. How your smile made me believe in things I didn't understand. You never knew how I felt...because I never told you.
It is in the silence of it—the answerless answer—that crushes you. It is as though you were existing in a hollowed-out shell of yourself where everything you'd held back was caged, imprisoned in the silence of the words you never uttered.
I should've told you, I could've told you, and maybe you might've...
But now there was no might-have, no more could-haves or should-haves. Only the what-if's lingering in the space between, growing wider by the minute.
A second chance can't exist when you never dared to pursue the first.
Love is the most innocent weapon, yet regret is far too bitter of a remedy.
Your eyes waver and you feel goosebumps rise all over your skin, in disbelief at the odds.
Beside you, Jun-Hee starts coughing and spluttering out water. His lips and skin are still far too pale, but the moment his eyes lock on yours, back to their deep chocolate brown rather than the opaque white of last night, he musters up all his strength to smile faintly at you and your entire world stops.
Without wasting another second, you fling your arms around his neck and hug him tightly, afraid that if you don't hold onto him, he'll disappear once again—this time, forever.
As you cry uncontrollably into his shoulder, he wraps one arm securely around your waist to hug you even closer until there's no semblance of space between the two of you and the other winds it's way to your hair at the nape of your neck, pressing the side of your face against his.
You're so close that you can feel his heartbeat against your own chest. "You don't know how scared and how hurt I was, but none of that matters now. You really came back."
You pull back slightly to look at him but he only draws you right back into his arms, breathing out a sigh of relief. "I promised, didn't I? That if I had to leave, I would always come back to you."
"I forbid you from ever doing that again. Rather than promising you'll come back, just stay here with me. That's all I ask for."
"Alright," Jun-Hee whispers on an exhale. "No more making promises neither of us can keep."
You nestle deeper into his shoulder as his hand runs up and down your hair, comforting you when you should be the one comforting him. "I won't forgive you if you put me before yourself again."
Jun-Hee chuckles softly as you feel him nod against your head. "Is that all you're going to tell me? What were you saying earlier about a chance to let me know something?"
You sit back at the announcement and Jun-Hee drops the subject as the two of you remain in stunned silence, the cruel reality once again dawning.
He runs his fingers over your bare wrist, and you finally look down to see his downcast expression at the missing bracelet.
You withdraw it from your skirt pocket and hand it over to him.
"Will you put it on for me, again? It fell off."
His eyes widen in realization. "So that means—"
"My wish came true, yes."
Jun-Hee delicately ties the red strings around your wrist and you look at the strands, now once again side by side.
"Can I ask what it was?"
"For you to come back to me."
He turns to you, looking upon you with all the fondness in the world.
"You spent a wish on me?"
His fingers reach out to lace against your own, and this time, it's nothing but filled with warmth and life.
"That price was still far too little for what you gave up for me."
Jun-Hee caresses the side of your face with his free hand, eyes staring straight at yours.
You hold your breath when he leans in, but as you close your eyes, he places a soft kiss on your forehead instead, squeezing your hand still in his, the press of his lips still lingering on your skin.
"You'll always be worth it and more, Han Seol-Hwa."
After a piercing scream erupts nearby, you and Jun-Hee dash toward the source, following the sound all the way to the cafeteria where Eun-Chan and Na-Hee are sprawled on the floor in shock while Eun-Ha, Yeon-Woo, and Mi-Na shield their eyes by the farthest corner possible, Seung-Bin's body a bloody pulp laying in the middle of the floor.
Deep gashes mar every inch of his stomach, skin mangled and covered in blood. If you looked close enough, parts of his intestine and abdominal organs were visible just below the surface.
As you survey the scene, the rest of your friend group come running in, looks of relief upon their faces at seeing you and Jun-Hee.
The silence is immediately broken as Jin-Ha stumbles in from the direction of the bathrooms, shirtless and bumbling as if he's seen a ghost.
"Yah..." Yeon-Woo utters. "Did you...kill him?"
Jin-Ha immediately goes on the defensive, shaking his head every which way. "It's not what it looks like!" Despite his insistence, his reactions and behavior make him appear to be far guiltier than he claims. You can't tell if it's sweat or tears rolling down his face but he wipes at it in haste, eliminating all traces. "When I woke up this morning, that's how I found him," his voice cracking at the end. "It wasn't me." As everyone looks from him to Seung-Bin's corpse and back again, he emphasizes hurriedly, "Guys, it really wasn't me."
Putting the growing suspicion aside for the moment, you kneel down beside the body, deftly braiding your long hair to keep it out of the way.
Next to you, Yoon-Seo has her phone at the ready to take pictures of the surrounding shoe prints, imprinted on the floor in blood.
"You two have got to be kidding me," Jung-Won intones from behind, though you pay her no mind.
As Da-Bum brings in a long white sheet to cover up the gruesome scene, you signal for him to wait, extending your hand towards the wounds, pulling the skin back to investigate.
When more blood gushes out of the opening, Yoon-Seo has to clamp a hand over her mouth, getting up to walk over to a trash can, dry heaving.
With your parents having been surgeons, it allowed you to watch more live surgeries than you can count, and you knew your way around the human body fairly well, particularly fatal landmarks.
Jun-Hee hauls you up and away as you sit there staring, trying to connect the dots, preventing the others from clearing the body.
"The three of them were inseparable," Yeon- Woo whispers, referring to Kyung-Jun's group.
"Talk about some loyal friends..." Eun- Chan admonishes, clucking his tongue.
"Between life and death, loyalty is no priority to them," Eun-Ha says openly and the statement hangs heavily in the air, everyone far too privy to the weight it holds.
Jung-Won sighs. "We should go. The smell of blood is sickening."
"Not yet," you refute. Turning to the group, you tell them what you found. "There are multiple stab wounds littered across his body, all inflicted at a particular site. The length and depth of it can be estimated to be by a knife."
"Stop talking about this," Jung-Won cuts in tiredly. "I don't think anyone wants to know the gory details."
You turn to her. "It may be scary to hear, but aren't we all wondering why someone would take things this far? There are far less cruel methods if the Mafia wanted someone to die overnight just so they can add on to their kill count, no?"
"Maybe the Mafia members are just that cruel," Jung-Won deadpans.
"But this..." you pause, eyeing the puddles of bloodstains still on the floor, "...This is way too morbid."
"What do you mean?" Yoon-Seo asks quietly, scrolling through the evidence she was able to gather.
"From what I saw, it looked like Seung-Bin was stabbed even after he had already died. There were wounds far fresher than others, as well as far deeper. To attack his internal organs in such a manner and especially in the stomach where you can quickly die of hemorrhage, the intent to kill extends beyond the reasoning for this game."
"You don't think—" Hyun-Ho starts.
You nod your head sadly. "Yes. In this case, whoever was involved wanted revenge, not simply for him to die. Up until this point, no one's death has been this gruesome or out in the open."
"I can't take this anymore," Mi-Na mutters. "Maybe we should all leave this for now and see what else we can find."
Your huge group ends up in agreement and exit forlornly, ultimately ending up in the annex where the other half of your classmates are crowded around a wall with what appears to be writing on it.
From the Police: Jun-Hee is a Citizen.
"Is this your doing?" Da-Bum turns to Jun- Hee, questioning.
"How can it be? Have you forgotten where I was last night? It's impossible."
Da-Bum shies away in embarrassment as Eun-Chan speaks up, "Did the Police actually write this?"
"Maybe they're finally putting their skill to good use," Eun-Ha suggests before rounding her immediate friend group to go back to their rooms.
"It wasn't here yesterday, right?" Dong- Hyun inquires as he surveys the handwriting.
"No, I don't remember seeing it," Hyun-Ho answers. "If I did, I don't think I would forget to bring it up."
You squint your eyes at the odd shade of the writing, a burnt orange color you've yet to see in typical markers.
On instinct, you reach a hand toward the font and swipe at it with your forefinger, drawing it toward your nose.
Providine.
The silence is defeaning as you all gather in the classroom where the discussion the night of Woo-Ram's elimination took place.
It feels like deja vu: the unending sense of unease, the suspicions leading to betrayals, and the unyielding curse of false accusations.
You sit beside Jun-Hee atop a table as he addresses the group. "I had no choice but to lie yesterday. I'm a Citizen. I don't know who the Doctor who saved me was but I wanted to give a word of thanks."
When you look up, you catch Yu-Jun's eye at the far corner of the room and hope that it's able to convey the enormous gratitude you felt toward him. He wasn't obligated to use it for Jun-Hee, or for your sake for that matter, but it means more than he could ever know.
Kyung-Jun leans forward in his chair and sends Jun-Hee a dirty look. "Living is one thing, but your identity in this game is a separate matter. Just because you came back to life doesn't clear you of suspicion."
"Right," Mi-Na chimes in, and you outwardly roll your eyes. She always bandwagons, going along with whatever someone else tells her rather than come to her own decisions or simply even having her own thoughts. "How come his identity wasn't revealed yesterday? Usually it's customary when they die."
"He wasn't out of the game completely given the resurrection, so why would it be announced?" You turn to Mi-Na and shoot her a look, one that conveys without words your feelings, that makes her lower her head, discouraged from pursuing the issue further.
"It really wasn't you who wrote the message on the wall?" Kyung-Jun changes the subject, but once again, it still targets Jun-Hee, and your fingers tighten around the phone in your hands, tired of this back and forth.
"Do you think I had the time to do so?" Jun- Hee grits out through his teeth, trying to remain civil. "Would it make sense between my waking up and yours, that I would have been able to run to the annex just for that?"
"Who knows?" Jin-Ha intones childishly. "Maybe you wrote it in the middle of the night while we were asleep." He shrugs his shoulders mockingly, before adding, "Why would you willingly choose to be eliminated unless you were crazy and knew you would be saved? You Mafia bastard."
"He's a Citizen," you comment confidently as you stare down Jin-Ha. "Can we say the same about you?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Isn't there something you want to tell us?"
Jin-Ha stands up abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. The screeching sound has everyone turning to him. "Don't talk in circles, you bitch!"
"Quiet!" Kyung-Jun shouts, and Jin-Ha turns his head toward his leader, still shaking in anger. "Stop embarrassing yourself."
"You can't so easily cast accusations on someone else when you were the most suspicious this morning," you spit out with venom. "Don't act as if none of us saw you behaving weirdly earlier when we found Seung-Bin's body."
Jin-Ha deflates quickly, dropping back down into his seat, seething as to remain strong and in control. "How was I weird?!" He barely restrains himself from full out screaming at you.
"Since you came out of the bathroom without a shirt on pleading with everyone that you weren't the killer, was it before or after you discarded your bloody top?"
"How did you—"
"Shut up!" Kyung-Jun bellows at him. "Right now!"
Jin-Ha presses his lips together tightly, chin quivering. He knows he's been silenced, his interjection alone more incriminating than he intended.
"What would you do if the Police actually are trying to communicate with us?" Yoon-Seo speaks up beside you.
"Have you ever thought of that possibility?"
"I also think the same," Na-Hee voices meekly. "Perhaps the Doctor knows more than we do and was sure that Jun-Hee's a Citizen. They wouldn't just risk saving a random person most likely to be Mafia."
"Rather than interrogating Jun-Hee, isn't finding the person who killed Seung-Bin a more pressing matter?" So-Mi's words echo yours and that has everyone turning steadily toward Jin-Ha, seeking answers.
"It wasn't me!" Jin-Ha stresses. "He was already dead when I woke up!"
Yoon-Seo shifts on her feet and starts her investigation. "You said it was just you two, right?" At Jin-Ha's nod, she continues on. "Was there anything unusual that happened that you remember of?"
Jin-Ha runs a hand down his face, trying to recall details late last night and early this morning. "Nothing stands out." He looks around and noticing more than a few narrowed eyes on him, backpedals. "The Mafias could have easily smeared the blood on me when I was out cold, but I swear I wasn't trying to get rid of evidence or anything a few hours ago!" Met with silence, he expectantly turns to Kyung-Jun. "Isn't that right? You know me better than everyone here. I wouldn't do that."
Kyung-Jun scoffs, and his next words has Jin-Ha's expectant expression dropping, betrayal written all over his face. "Maybe I don't know you as well as I thought."
"What?"
"More than a few people witnessed you covered in Seung-Bin's blood. Isn't that clear evidence?" Kyung-Jun looks Jin-Ha dead in the eyes, no regrets evident. "Is it not because he kept picking on you, belittling you, that you found the perfect chance to end him completely? It's getting more likely that you'll be voted out."
"Is this how you repay me?!" Jin-Ha questions, and your blood runs cold at the way Kyung-Jun so easily casts people aside, readily sending them to their deaths without so much as a blink of his eyes. "Gaesaekki."
Kyung-Jun kicks his chair aside and it upends after tumbling over its own legs, winding up upside down a few feet away, the sound reverberating in the now still- room. "You must have a death wish, scumbag."
He grabs Jin-Ha by the neck of his shirt and the two wrestle one another, throwing the other onto the tabletops, their strengths nearly equal.
That is, until Jin-Ha bumps into the edge of one and lands on the floor, holding his hip. Seeing the lucky advantage, Kyung-Jun immediately makes the most of it, kicking the former relentlessly, showing no mercy or regard for their past friendship.
Yoon-Seo dashes over in an attempt to pry them apart, but with a quick fling of Kyung-Jun's arm, it sends her straight to the floor with a yelp.
You hurry over to get her back to her feet, supporting her with an arm behind her back and one in the front across her shoulder line as she stands up, moving her farther away from the chaos.
Ultimately, it takes both Hyun-Ho and Dong-Hyun to pry Kyung-Jun off an already battered and bleeding Jin-Ha, new scratches littering his face and lip cut, fresh bleed oozing out.
"Vote him out!"
"How can you be so certain it's him?!" Yoon-Seo admonishes. "What if you're wrong? What then?!"
You squeeze her shoulder and pull her back even more as Kyung-Jun swivels his head to glare at her. "Shut your fucking mouth and do as you're told."
While he's momentarily distracted, Jun-Hee strides toward him and snatches his phone from his shirt pocket.
"Give that back, you fucker."
"For what? So that you can keep doing whatever the hell you want?"
"What's it to you? You do as you wish and so can I."
"If you keep this power trip up and behave like a dictator, there's no guarantee that you won't wind up getting every single vote." That shuts the taller one up for the time being as he realizes no one is on his side. "We'll meet again at eleven tonight to decide as a whole. Let's not act rashly until then," Jun-Hee concludes.
Although everyone is still skeptical and more confused than anything, the crowd ultimately disperses, including a peeved Kyung-Jun who is allowed to have his phone back, courtesy of Jun-Hee.
In a final show of defiance, he kicks a lone table so hard it slams against the wall though no one bats an eye, too used to his anger issues by now.
In the meantime, Dong-Hyun and Hyun-Ho place Jin-Ha's arms, one on either of their shoulders, and hoist him up.
"Let's get him to the infirmary," Yoon-Seo leads, Jung-Won and you trailing behind the other four.
Before you can leave, a hand reaches out to wrap around your wrist.
Sensing you no longer following, Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won look behind them, but seeing the hold up, they nod and head out first.
"Is everything alright?"
Jun-Hee simply nods as he slides his fingers down until they reach your hand, holding them in his own.
"So-Mi," he mutters, startling her as she's cleaning up the fallen tables and chairs in the room as a result of the fight earlier. "Can we talk?"
She immediately stops and turns to him, all bright-eyed and lips curling upward.
"I'll go," you yield, ready to take your hand away.
"Yeah, you really should."
So-Mi can barely contain her smile as she straightens out her skirt and hair quickly.
"No, I want you to stay."
Her smile falls as quickly as it appeared, expression turning ever darker when Jun-Hee laces his fingers through yours.
"Didn't you have something to tell me? Only me?"
"This isn't something just between us," Jun-Hee straightforwardly settles. "Whatever I have or need to say, it will always be in front of her."
"What is it then?"
"Don't ever frame anyone, especially Seol-Hwa, for me."
So-Mi scoffs, hatred burning in her eyes. "Jun-Hee, can't you see that I was trying to save you? All I wanted was to help."
"I never asked for it."
"How can you say that to me?"
“You can blame me all you want, but the truth is you didn't do it for me. You did it for yourself."
"Yah Kim Jun-Hee," she mutters in disbelief. "Don't you remember what I did for you, or are you just that heartless? Who sided with you when you were suspected?" So-Mi points a finger at her chest repeatedly, tapping it against her sternum. "It was me!" Her lip quivers, eyes enlarged. "Get a hold of yourself! Do you really want me to consider you a Mafia?"
"Suit yourself," Jun-Hee replies with utmost disinterest, turning to walk away while pulling you along. "I've only ever cared about what Seol-Hwa thinks of me."
With your back against one of the bed frames for the bunk beds, your brain is elsewhere rather than in reality.
Seated around the table in the middle of the room, Yoon-Seo, Jung-Won, Da-Bum, Hyun-Ho and Dong-Hyun all stare off into space, lost in their own thoughts.
Jun-Hee takes a seat beside you, looking at you warily from where you're not moving your gaze away from your phone, eyes scanning across the device, counting those remaining over and over again.
"Eat even if you don't want to," comes Jung-Won's voice as a triangle kimbap and soda are placed in your field of vision. "I can't remember the last time I saw you eat something ever since we got here."
You look up at her then glance to the kimbap in her outstretched hand. She still remembers your go-to convenience store food, even after all these years.
Hesitantly taking it, you push the soda back toward her. "This one's your favorite. It always has been."
Jung-Won sends you a small smile and immediately cracks the soda can open, taking a long gulp from it.
The break in the silence of the room spurs the rest to take tiny bites of snacks atop the table that up until now had remained untouched.
Da-Bum, Hyun-Ho, and Dong-Hyun all rise shortly after, and you call out to them,
"Where are you three going? Should I be worried?"
Hyun-Ho shakes his head. "Dong-Hyun and I are just going to check around for any more trouble." As he walks past you, he ruffles your hair. "Don't fret so much eomma."
"You—" you retort, but the two are already out of the room before you can follow.
Da-Bum juts a finger in an arbitrary direction. "My laptop is still in the basement so..."
"Oh, right," Jung-Won acknowledges, a light slap to her forehead. "I'll go with you then."
You close your eyes momentarily at the much needed silence, Jun-Hee's and Yoon- Seo's rummaging around the room not at all deterring your peace.
"Hey, Seol-Hwa, Yoon-Seo," Jun-Hee suddenly calls. Your eyes open, one first then finally the other, after seeing him hold Woo-Ram's camcorder in his hands, not a bit worse for wear. You hadn't seen it since the hiking incident, not wishing to ever relive those memories. Huddling around Jun-Hee on either side, you and Yoon-See peer at the small rectangular screen, following the path of Jun-Hee's pointer finger. "Watch." He presses play and it captures a far away image of what appears to be a couple on a cliff outcrop overlooking the ocean. Neither you nor Yoon-Seo had seen this in person, with her having stayed back at the building and you with Dong-Hyun on the other side of the trail. "They don't move at all. Isn't this strange?"
"It doesn't look real."
Even seeing it, you couldn't believe it. The footage enters in and out with static, though the image is permanently at a standstill.
"How is this possible?" Yoon-Seo angles the screen more toward her and Jun-Hee lets her have it as she fast-forwards through the video, eventually zooming in to the couple's faces. "Uh...guys."
"What is it?"
Yoon-Seo quickly flips the screen your way at your concern, and you catch sight of the scratched out faces, exactly like that of the school photos you found.
"What do we make of this?"
Jun-Hee runs a hand through his hair as Yoon-Seo closes the camcorder shut, fingers rubbing her temples.
"I think we should revisit the teacher's lounge."
The two nod as they readily follow your path straight toward the offices.
It's left completely untouched and in the exact same condition you all found it the first night upon arrival.
"Nothing's changed, yet everything has," Yoon-Seo murmurs, more to herself than anything.
You plop down behind one of the computers and reboot the system, hoping something— anything—comes of it this time around.
A flash comes from the corner and you overhear bits and pieces of Jun-Hee's and Yoon-Seo's conversation, although you're too busy looking below the desk for possible clues you've potentially missed.
"A picture of me? What for?"
"I tried with inanimate objects in this room, and the result is fine, but human subjects... the face is distorted. It's so unsettling, Jun-Hee."
As you're about to pull yourself up, the faintest whisper of movement catches your ear. A sound. Faint at first, like a breeze running through paper, but unmistakably...human. Your pulse spikes as you spin around, your breath hitching as you scan the cubicle walls. The air feels thicker now, charged.
Then, the crawling sensation creeps in, running from your neck to trail down your spine as goosebumps start to litter your skin.
When you look over, thin spindly black fingers inch into view, cold, spectral— ghostly and translucent—crawling up the dividers.
The first one appears from the shadowed corner, stretching like a long, spidery limb. Your heart pounds against your ribs as you stare unmoving at the digits sliding up the wall, bending and curving unnaturally, moving without sound.
You recoil back, eyes locked onto the fingers as they continue their slow ascent, unable to look away. There was something hypnotic, something awful, in the way they moved, like they were searching for prey, creeping closer, pale nails directed at you.
You shake your head as you blink, trying to rid yourself of the hallucination, and suddenly, a shiny golden key drops from thin air.
Your fingers are clutched so tightly around your phone that they turn white, gradually losing feeling.
A ping snaps you out of it and with shaky hands, it takes you multiple tries to finally open the animation announcement, a perfect picture replica of the key you just obtained.
[ ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴀᴍᴇ ʜᴏsᴛ. ]
As you sit stunned with the key still in your outstretched hand laid face-up atop the table, the door swings open and closed again.
"Seol-Hwa...?" Da-Bum whispers, drawing the attention of the others. "Are you... okay?"
Jun-Hee makes to touch your face, but thinks better of it seeing you in total shock. "You look really shaken up. What's wrong?"
Jung-Won leans her elbow on the counter beside you, studying you worriedly.
"I saw a ghost earlier." Everyone's varying reactions would've been comical in any other situation if the stakes weren't so deadly. "It gave me this—"
You present the sole key to them.
"Do you know what it's for?"
Jun-Hee leans over from behind you to peer at it, curious.
"I have no clue, but since there's a message for it, it must be something important."
Jung-Won stands closer as Yoon-Seo and Da-Bum also crowd around to assess. "What did it say?"
"What we've all been wanting: to find the host." You tilt your head at her, confused. "Did you not get the instructions?"
Jung-Won pulls out her phone and scrolls before peering up over the top edge of glasses, staring long and hard at you. "I didn't." Addressing the group, she asks, "How about the rest of you?"
Met with three matching shakes of the head, you gaze at them dumbfounded.
"Was it only for me?"
"Can you show me what it looks like?" Jung-Won gestures toward your device and you readily unlock it, going straight to the notification center within the game.
You bite on the inside of your cheek as the inbox reads empty. "It...disappeared." To your own ears, even you sound odd, but who would lie about something this out of the ordinary. "Regardless, there must be a reason to find the host. Why don't we alert everyone and make the search easier, hmm?"
"Is that really necessary?" Jung-Won exhales and her tone suddenly becomes curt. "I have to be honest with you Seol-Hwa, I can't keep up with the things you tell us. We never find anything based on these half leads. What if you get suspected as Mafia again for saying that?"
The others can sense the tension growing between the two of you as your voice changes from hopeful to one of annoyance. "This has nothing to do with my intuition or pieces of clues. The game itself sent me the message."
Shaking her head, it seems as though Jung-Won can hardly contain herself from iterating something she'd regret. "Yes, to you only, and for your eyes only. We don't even have evidence of it. If other people don't believe it, there's nothing you can do."
"Are you saying I made all of this up?" your voice rises, and Da-Bum jumps in anxiously, hoping to shift the conversation elsewhere.
"It's not that we're blaming you, but rather, the situation..."
"Right," Jung-Won placates. "I just think it's better for all of us to be careful until we find solid evidence. We can't afford to end up in the same position of sacrificing one of us like the previous nights."
Yoon-Seo remains quiet, glancing back and forth between all of you sadly.
As a last resort, you turn to Jun-Hee, but you can already tell it's a lost cause.
"Seol-Hwa, you know I believe you—no matter what it is. It's the fact that the rest doesn't in the way I do that has me worried. Maybe we can keep this between us for the time being?"
You look around at all of them in quick succession, feeling more hurt than you expected. "So the final verdict is what?" you say aloud bitterly. "That you all trust me— just not enough?"
"That's not—" Jung-Won interjects, but you push your chair back, walking away from the desk, key in hand.
"Seol-Hwa..." comes Yoon-Seo's kind voice as you head for the door.
With your hand around the doorknob, Jun-Hee grabs your free one, making you swivel back around.
"Let me come with."
For the first time, you find it hard to readily accept his companionship as you slip your hand out of his.
You know that the look in his eyes as you leave is one of regret, clashing with the look of dejection in yours.
The retreat center was vast, empty in its isolation, with the kind of oppressive silence that swallowed everything—every breath, every thought.
You wander down the narrow stone path outside the entrance, careful not to overstep the borderlines, each step hesitant against the asphalt.
The air is thick with the smell of damp earth, despite no recent downpours, the faint whisper of the wind through the trees, and the looming unsettling knowledge that another night would soon begin.
It wasn't that you didn't know the game was still unfolding, like a nightmare that couldn't end, but you thought you had adapted—that you were resilient enough to brace yourself against the horrors.
However, it was the quiet moments that cut the deepest.
Your heart weighed heavier than usual. You were foolish to think that friendship and loyalty could turn the tides of this situation, but the longer you were all involved, the greater the distance between you all grew with each passing day.
The looks.
The half-formed glances.
The doubts that override trust.
Perhaps no one had outright said it, but it was in their eyes—the fear, the suspicion. You couldn't blame them, regardless of your personal disappointments.
In a game to the death where everyone is forced to play the villain in one way or the other, who could find fault in anyone for becoming paranoid—for not being able to trust anyone fully except oneself?
Exhaling on a long outbreath, you lower yourself onto the curb, sitting down with your legs outstretched in front of you.
"Hey."
A voice cuts through the silence, startling you from her thoughts. Turning, you instinctively gaze upward, eyes landing on the lone figure approaching.
Yu-Jun.
There weren't many instances where the two of you interacted, little in this game, and even more sparingly before it. He had always been distant, even in the halls of school, and just as he had perceptions about you, so did you about him so far as concerning his character, by association of the friends he kept around him.
He had been one of those people who didn't care enough to pretend, too consumed with his own world to notice those of others.
Truthfully, you never liked him, and he'd certainly never been kind to you.
But, things were different now.
Both of you were resurrectors; it was your shared responsibility to bring back those chosen by the game's cruel hand—to give them another chance to survive.
You could see the weight of that responsibility was starting to show on Yu-Jun's face. His eyes were heavy, hollow. There was also something else there now—a weariness you couldn't place, a kind of sorrow you hadn't seen in him when Ji-Soo was still around.
"Hey," you repeat, voice softer than you mean for it to be.
Yu-Jun takes a step closer, his footsteps deliberate, debating whether to sit beside you. "You're out here alone." After a few more awkward shuffles of his feet, he takes a seat on the same curb as you, a respectable distance away.
You shrug, arms crossed tightly over your midsection. "Just needed a little bit of space to myself."
He nodded as if understanding, then looked away, line of sight drifting to the ground. The silence stretches thin, until finally, he speaks again, low and almost detached.
"I can't save anyone tonight, but I know I made the right previous choice."
"Why did you choose to save Jun-Hee?" You dragging the toe of your shoe against the gravel, rocks crunching beneath your feet, finding the right words to rephrase with. "Not that I'm not thankful, it's just... don't take offense to this, but I didn't pin you to be the type to do so."
Yu-Jun doesn't meet your eyes. Instead, he stared off into the darkness, his jaw tight, like the words are hard to force out. "I didn't want you both to end up like me," he mutters, his voice cracking, though he quickly clears his throat to mask it. "I couldn't save her. I couldn't save us."
Your gaze flickers to his, and for the briefest moment, something vulnerable flashes in his eyes. "Do you see you both in Jun-Hee and I?"
He looks down at his hands as if can still feel the weight of Ji-Soo in his arms.
He pauses as if her name still lingers on the tip of his tongue.
"That night I... I should've saved her. I was supposed to—choose between myself and her. Like a coward, I..." he halts, words choking on the air. "I chose myself."
You didn't speak, letting him continue. Something in the way his shoulders hunched told you that talking about this wasn't easy for him and you could sense the bitterness, the guilt, so thick in his tone.
The confession hangs in the silence, suffocating on its own weight.
It was too easy to hear the regret in his voice, the sorrow that he hadn't been able to shake. His past was now a living ghost that haunted him, and you felt a pang of sympathy for him.
"Why didn't you save her?" you ask softly, words careful, far too gentle.
Yu-Jun turns toward you, a mixture of pain and sadness in his eyes. "Because I'm a fool —I have always been a fool. I truly thought I could beat the game. I thought I could make it through. I believed that if I just played the right way, I—we—could survive. But I know now how wrong I was." His voice drops to a whisper, barely audible. "Now, every time I bring someone back... I ask myself if I'm just choosing them to make up for the one I lost?"
You reach out, placing your hand lightly on his shoulder. It wasn't much—just a small, quiet gesture of comfort.
"All grievances are settled at the end of every life. Ji-Soo will hear you and she'll understand. I know so," you reassure, certain.
Yu-Jun stiffens at first, before his shoulders fall and he breathes out, long and slow, nodding in acceptance as he sits in silence to ponder.
You brush off your skirt as you stand up, turning to leave and allow him to be with his thoughts on his own, sensing the end of your talk.
As you take one last look back, you can't seem to shake the feeling that this might be the first and last conversation you'll ever have with him.
