I've always hated this smell.
Chrysanthemums, formaldehyde, wax, and something metallic — dry, lifeless, the scent of the end, trying in vain to be masked by incense. This smell always hurt me more than death itself. It says: "It's all over" — even when there's still something alive in the heart that cannot be let go.
***
The funeral hall was full of people, but to me, they were just background — like the sound of rain against glass. I saw only him.
Do‑yeon stood by the portrait where I was smiling — slightly confused, slightly awkward. That photograph had been taken three years ago, by the sea. He had been laughing then, saying he had caught me "in a moment of pure happiness."
Now the same face, framed and surrounded by white flowers, looked mockingly alive. As if someone had decided to ease the pain: "Look at him. He's smiling, but he's no longer yours."
***
He wore a black suit, too perfect to be real. I recognized that gaze — frozen, mechanical, polite. The face of someone performing a ritual, long forgetting why.
His lips whispered something: "Thank you.""Yes, I'm holding on.""I'm sorry."
Each nod was like a crack inside. He wasn't crying. He just stood there, like an actor on someone else's stage — only meant to observe, never to act.
***
— Leave this place, — I whispered. — This isn't you.
My voice dissolved in the air. I was empty, yet I needed to speak, to touch him somehow, to break through the numbness that held him.
I remembered how, as a child, he hid under the table when someone raised their voice. I would play Chopin — Nocturne No. 2. The moment the first note played, he would appear, pretending he had just been lost in thought. And the fear would vanish. He was always painfully sensitive.
And now — he hides again. Not under a table, but beneath a black suit, beneath politeness, beneath burned-out emptiness.
***
When he shook the professor's hand, I noticed a thin scratch on his palm — fresh, faintly pink. Immediately, I knew: it came from the wall. The wall he had hit when I slammed the door yesterday.
"This is me," I thought. "It's all my fault."
I wanted to touch him, to erase that artificial composure from his face, to warm him.
But my fingers passed through him again, leaving only cold and shivers — as if I were touching a memory, not flesh.
He flinched for a second, but didn't lift his head.
***
After the funeral, Do‑yeon's life stopped flowing.
It simply stood still, like water in a sealed vessel.
He stayed in our apartment. He didn't move my things. He didn't rearrange anything.
The cup with the cracked handle on the windowsill — all left as I had.
Even the small things that once seemed accidental now felt sacred.
***
He moved around the room slowly, as if afraid to disturb the air. His phone vibrated. It rang. He didn't answer.
At first, he sent colleagues brief emails: "Family matters."
Then he stopped entirely.
His piano remained covered with a gray cloth, like a gravestone.
***
And I — I just sat nearby.
Watching him stare out the window, seeing the city reflected in his eyes — dim, colorless, like old photographs.
I whispered, prayed, called to him. But my words never reached his world.
— Do‑yeon, eat something, — I whispered. — Don't leave yourself alone.
My hand couldn't press the coffee maker's button. My shadow couldn't fall on the floor. My love couldn't reach through death.
***
A week passed. Then another.
Autumn darkened, thick and viscous, like old oil.
Rain fell every day.
I almost got used to its rhythm — not hearing it truly, but feeling the city's heart beating somewhere nearby, as if it belonged to someone else.
***
One day, he entered my studio. The door he hadn't opened since the funeral.
I stood in the corner, afraid to breathe, as if I might startle his fragile resolve.
On the easel hung my last work — unfinished, a transition from orange to blue, from light to shadow.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then he picked up the brush I'd been given for my birthday.
And he began to paint over it — black, sharp, stroke after stroke.
Over the sun. Over the sky. Over everything I had left on the canvas.
— Don't do this! — I screamed.
But the scream had no weight. Only a faint trembling of the air.
***
He continued until everything was black.
Then he dropped the brush. Paint splattered on the floor, leaving traces like shards of night.
He looked at the painting, but he did not see it.
He saw himself.
Then he turned the canvas face-down against the wall and closed the door.
The key clicked — quietly, yet definitively.
He locked everything: me, us, the past.
***
When he returned to the living room, I followed him.
He sat at the piano, removed the cloth.
The room instantly came alive — dust in the lamplight like stars.
He raised his hands above the keys, but didn't play a single note.
I knew: if he played even one, he could survive. He knew it too.
— Play, Do‑yeon, — I begged. — Your music always saved us.
He closed his eyes, as if listening to the silence.
Maybe he heard? Maybe he felt my whisper?
His hands trembled, but never touched the keys.
***
He quickly covered the piano again and, sitting on the stool, buried his face in his hands.
— You shouldn't have… — he exhaled. Low, hoarse, as if from pain he could no longer contain. — You shouldn't have left, Cheon‑woo.
I froze. He said my name. But not to me.
He spoke to his reflection in the window.
I wanted to answer. To shout that I hadn't left. That I was here, beside him.
But I couldn't.
Between us lay a wall — not glass, not stone, but made of guilt and love.
A wall that could not be broken.
***
That night, he slept for the first time in a long while.
I sat nearby, watching the city outside the window — its distant lights, unable to warm even the living.
My world shrank to a single room, to his breathing, to the rustle of the blanket.
I was bound.
But it was not love. It was pain, frozen between hearts.
______________________
"When you love so much that you cannot leave — it's no longer life, nor death.
It's just waiting.
And each new day becomes another proof that even ghosts know how to miss."