The next day, she walked through her own life like a shadow.
Every gesture felt distant, blurred, as if there was a cold pane of glass between her and the world.
She ate breakfast without tasting anything, staring at the ring on the coffee table.
She replied to her fiancé's messages with vague, automatic phrases—yes, don't worry, we'll talk tonight… each one sounding like a lie she no longer had the strength to think.
Her phone vibrated several times throughout the day, and every time it buzzed, she felt her heart stop for one second—a stupid hope, an absurd reflex.
What if it was him…?
What if—
But no.
Always her fiancé.
Never Sion.
And that absence now hurt a thousand times more than before.
She tried going out.
To breathe in the icy early-winter air whipping through Seoul.
The streets were alive, loud, bright.
She wasn't.
At every corner, every storefront reflection, she thought she saw him—his shadow, his scent, his abrupt movements, his golden stare.
As if her mind were torturing her on purpose.
She nearly collapsed on the sidewalk several times.
She eventually returned home, heart heavy, hands freezing despite her gloves, mind exhausted from the constant inner war she had been fighting for days.
When she pushed the door open, she heard her fiancé singing in the bathroom.
Off-key.
Happy.
Loving.
Carefree.
His carefree joy hurt her—it was too sharp a contrast to the chaos inside her.
He came out in a towel, hair wet, a big smile on his face:
— Baby… where were you? I tried calling you at lunch!
She tried to smile, but her face trembled.
— Sorry. I needed air.
He kissed her forehead—gentle, tender, normal.
A normality that strangled her.
— Want me to make you dinner? I bought kimchi from your favorite place! he said proudly.
Nari nodded.
She wanted to cry.
Not from sadness.
Not from anger.
From shame.
She sat on a chair, watching him chop vegetables with adorable seriousness.
He talked about everything and nothing—his job, the match, weekend plans, the date they should choose to announce the engagement to his mother.
Nari felt like she was watching from a parallel world.
This man loves you.
He treats you well.
He doesn't hurt you.
He respects you.
You're going to marry him.
You should be happy.
But she felt…
nothing.
Or rather—she felt too much, but none of what she was supposed to feel.
Her breathing quickened, a wave of anxiety rising in her throat, a hard knot she couldn't swallow.
She stood up abruptly.
— I'm going to get some air… just a minute, she whispered.
— What? But… are you okay? You're shaking…
— I'm fine. I'll be right back.
She shut the door behind her.
The cold bit her face.
She leaned against the hallway wall, eyes closed, head tilted back, skin burning despite the icy air.
One minute.
One minute to breathe.
To survive.
To keep from collapsing on the kitchen floor in front of a man who didn't deserve this.
Her phone vibrated.
Again.
She jumped, pulled it out, hoping—
without admitting it.
fiancé: Do you want me to come get you?
She inhaled deeply.
Too long.
Way too long.
Why do I feel like I'm dying?
Why can't I breathe?
Why does it feel like everything is collapsing?
And then she realized.
Because she had spent the night in another man's arms.
Because that man lit an uncontrollable fire in her.
Because something had happened that night that wasn't sex, nor passion, nor even pain.
Something else.
A tenderness that broke her in half.
A vulnerability in him she had never seen.
A bond she refused to name, but that consumed her.
She fell to her knees in the hallway, hands over her mouth.
— Why am I doing this… why can't I forget him… why him…
Her tears slipped silently down her face.
Because even absent, even destructive, even forbidden…
Sion was everywhere.
In her mind.
In her body.
And now… in her heart.
She stayed like that for a long time—unable to move, unable to go back inside, unable to continue her life as if nothing had happened.
She was suspended between two worlds—
one safe, sweet, stable…
the other dangerous, burning, impossible.
And for the first time, she understood the pain she felt wasn't just longing.
It was the truth she didn't dare say out loud:
I think… I'm falling in love with Sion.
And I think it's going to destroy me.
The return to "normal life"
She tried on wedding dresses.
Smiled at her future mother-in-law.
Was congratulated by her fiancé's friends.
Prepared the invitations.
Tasted the wedding cake.
Simple tasks.
Ordinary rituals.
A "perfect" life.
One evening, her fiancé took her in his arms and rocked her gently, his heart full of sincere love.
— I'm so happy you're going to be my wife… really… you have no idea.
She closed her eyes, her throat tight.
She wanted to believe it.
She wanted to be that woman.
The one who chooses softness, stability, light.
It had been a month since he had disappeared again.
A month during which the last night they shared kept crashing back into her memory with the force of a tidal wave.
Sometimes, late at night, when her fiancé slept, she locked herself in the bathroom, stared at her own reflection and whispered:
— Forget him… forget him… forget him…
Sion's absence was physical.
In her skin.
In her bones.
In her breath.
She hated herself for it.
She despised herself for still being attached to a man who had broken her as much as he had awakened her.
Meanwhile…
Sion was drowning too.
On the other side of Seoul, in a hospital room where machines beeped like a countdown, Sion watched over his mother—grey-skinned, fragile-handed, her gaze lost in a fractured world.
Sometimes she called him by another name.
Sometimes she screamed that he was dead.
Sometimes she begged him not to leave her.
Sometimes she hit him, mistaking him for someone else.
And he stayed.
Still.
Silent.
Jaw clenched.
Heart crushed.
No matter the chaos screaming inside him, he didn't move.
He had learned since childhood to stay upright while the world collapsed.
But the second he stepped out of the clinic…
…it was her.
Always her.
Nari.
He thought of nothing else:
her skin,
her tears,
her warmth,
her voice,
the way she had whispered I'm getting married as if each syllable were a knife.
He saw her again in those sheets that night.
Broken.
Shaking.
Beautiful like a wound.
He saw himself too—drunk, fragile, vulnerable—collapsing into her arms like a drowning man clinging to his last breath.
Everything he had buried for years—longing, fear, pain—had surged back all at once.
And he had run.
Because feeling…
was forbidden.
He returned to alcohol.
To dark bars.
To bottles too strong.
To endless nights.
He drank to forget.
To sleep.
To stop thinking.
To stop feeling.
But nothing worked.
She was a burn that wouldn't heal.
He was sinking.
Fast.
Hard.
Uncontrolled.
Then one night…
Drunk out of his mind, rage in his stomach, jealousy in his veins…
He collapsed in his apartment.
Breaking everything.
Screaming.
Blood smeared on the walls.
Breath cut by pain and panic.
He thought of her through all of it.
Of her in another man's arms.
Of her saying vows to someone else.
Of her smiling at someone else.
It tore him apart.
Skinned him alive.
Devoured him.
He ended up on his knees in the middle of his wrecked living room, hands trembling, breath erratic:
— I can't let her go… I can't…
And he understood then, in a shattered whisper, in a burst of violent clarity:
I think I love her.
And I think it's going to destroy her.