It was too much.
The voices.
The accusations.
The pure hatred.
All he could feel in the moment was the blood trickling down his head. It felt shattering, it broke him.
Then all he could hear was how the flames waved with each flicker, how the car felt suffocating as it burnt and blared loudly—and the annoying stares and shouts of pedestrians.
But he felt and heard a large thud nearby.
The hood of the car.
She...
She looks... blank.
For a fleeting second, she thought death had already claimed her—that the broken vehicle below, the fractured glass, the trembling steel had swallowed her whole. But then she blinked, and through blood-veiled lashes, she saw him.
Not the fiancé who betrayed her.
Not a stranger gawking from the crowd.
But a man with eyes as hollow as her own.
// ————— •
Like a butterfly's fluttering changes throughout the seasons—there was also change for someone of foolish devotion.
The rain softened, the storm raged, the fog lingered, and the drought burned.
That was his life.
It seemed bleak.
Rain was his beginning.
A quiet, unassuming boy whose devotion was steady, unnoticed, but constant.
He was never the brightest nor the boldest, yet he was the one who stood by her side when others drifted away.
She, the crown of brilliance, and he — the boy content to remain in her shadow. It did not matter. Rain never demanded attention. Rain only fell, nourishing quietly. His every kindness, his every word, his every sacrifice was for her.
She became the sun in his sky, and he became the rain that softened her roots, that promised never to leave her barren.
Storm was his growing. Adolescence turned his worldly devotion into obsession.
She bloomed, dazzling, admired by all.
He stood at her side, fists clenched at the whispers of others, enduring the envy of rivals, the scorn of those who said he was unworthy. His love was no longer gentle—it was consuming, thundering, fierce. He would fight the world for her. He would bleed for her.
And when she accepted his hand, when she allowed him the place of fiancé, it was as though lightning struck his chest. He thought it fate. He thought it eternity. His storm would rage only to protect her.
But, something too sudden emerged.
The smokey and misty ambience.
The fog was his undoing.
When suspicion arose, when shadows began to cling to her once radiant image, he should have fought for her.
Should have spoken, should have shattered the fog with thunder. But he did not. The storm inside him grew quiet, uncertain.
For the first time, doubt crept in. He told himself he was only watching, only waiting for the truth.
But silence, too, is an answer.
And she, his soulmate, drowned in the fog he allowed.
Drought was his punishment.
When she left him, when the last thread between them snapped, his world became barren.
Love that had once been rain became thirst. No matter how much he drank—wine, work, meaningless company—it did not fill him.
His devotion had consumed him, and without her, there was nothing left to devote himself to. His parents looked away, friends disappeared, and even the mirror showed him only a husk.
He had given thirty years to her, and all that remained was emptiness.
So he chose the end.
The night was dry, the air suffocating as he gripped the steering wheel. Streetlights blurred into pale streaks. His heart did not pound. It was eerily still — as if it, too, had dried out. The accelerator pressed down beneath his foot, the building ahead loomed closer, and he thought—perhaps in flames, he could finally rest.
But fate, cruel as ever, intervened.
The crash roared like thunder. Glass shattered like sudden hail. Metal twisted, sparks spat into the night. He felt himself breaking—body, bone, breath.
The storm had returned, but it was his body caught in its violence.
And then—through the blur of smoke and blood—he saw her.
She was there.