The fire in the grand hall had burned low, leaving the manor drowned in half-light.
Duke Min Jae sat in silence, his hand resting against the arm of the chair, the faint tremble of his fingers betraying what his face would never show.
The rain had stopped, but the air still smelled of it — fresh, cold, and heavy with memories.
> She came back.
The thought repeated in his mind like a haunting melody.
Lady Seo Rin.
The name that once brought warmth, now carved pain into his chest.
He leaned back, closing his eyes. Behind the darkness of his eyelids, the past began to bleed through the cracks of time.
---
He was twelve again.
The night was louder, crueler.
Thunder had rolled across the skies of the Korya capital, and rain poured so hard it blurred the world. In that storm, a boy and a girl huddled behind the stables — two frightened souls hiding from voices that cursed their names.
> "You shouldn't have come here," she whispered. "Your father will—"
"He already knows," Min Jae had said, his voice shaking. "And I don't care."
He remembered the way Seo Rin's hands trembled as she tried to clean the blood from his lip. The beating from his father still burned across his cheek.
> "He hurt you again," she said softly, her eyes glistening. "Why do you never fight back?"
"Because he's stronger."
She had glared at him — small, fragile, yet fearless.
> "No one stays stronger forever."
That night, she had said something he never forgot.
> "One day, when you're free, promise me you'll never become like him."
He had promised. But promises, like rain, never stayed for long.
---
Min Jae opened his eyes. The firelight flickered against his face, and he almost laughed — bitter and hollow.
> And yet, look at me now, Rin.
A man carved from the very cruelty I once hated.
He rose from his chair, walking toward the window. The moonlight broke through the clouds, silver and faint. In its glow, he saw his reflection — cold, empty, and tired.
She had seen through him tonight.
Just one look from her, and all his armor cracked like thin glass.
---
Another memory surfaced.
The night she disappeared.
He had waited for her under the old maple tree beyond the manor gates, clutching the pendant she'd given him — a small silver moon, a token of their childish promise to "never forget."
But she never came.
Instead, the guards had found him the next morning, drenched in rain, holding that pendant in his fist like a wound.
By then, her family's house had burned.
The servants whispered that she'd perished.
He had believed it. He had to.
Until tonight.
---
A knock pulled him back to the present.
The door opened slightly, and his steward bowed.
> "Your Grace, shall I prepare a carriage for Lady Seo Rin's departure?"
He stared at the flames for a long time before answering.
> "No. Let her stay the night."
The steward hesitated.
> "As you wish."
When the door closed, Min Jae whispered to the empty room,
> "I can't lose her again."
The words sounded foreign on his tongue — like something from a dream he wasn't supposed to have.
---
Later, when the manor had fallen silent and the candles burned low, Min Jae walked through the dim corridors. He stopped before a guest chamber door — the one where Seo Rin was resting.
He could hear nothing from inside. Only the faint rustle of the curtains, the sigh of wind through the window.
His hand hovered above the doorknob, but he didn't open it.
> You said I should remember.
But remembering hurts more than forgetting.
He lowered his hand, stepping back, his heart aching with everything unsaid.
Then, quietly, her voice reached him from the other side of the door.
> "Min Jae…"
He froze.
> "You kept the pendant, didn't you?"
He didn't answer. But his fingers instinctively reached for his chest — where the silver moon still hung beneath his shirt.
---
That night, under the watch of the moon, neither of them slept.
One behind the door, clutching the past.
The other outside, haunted by it.
And somewhere between their heartbeats, the echo of what they once were whispered again — not gone, only waiting.
---
End of Chapter 5