The sickly flicker of the neon light buzzed above her head, an electric, icy hum that seeped into her temples, pounding against her skull like a slow, steady drum.
The small interrogation room reeked of stale coffee, harsh disinfectant, and the metallic scent of sleepless nights.
Nari sat on a hard plastic chair, fingers clenched around her own hands, squeezing so tight her knuckles turned white, so still she looked like she was trying to disappear into herself, to dissolve into the grey of the wall behind her.
Across from her, a police officer was typing something on his keyboard, the sound of the keys echoing in the empty room. Each click was a slap, a reminder of what had just happened: the screams, the blows, Sion, her boyfriend on the ground, the blood on the bridge, the sirens, the chaos.
And her, frozen in the middle of it all, shaking, legs weak, breath short.
— Miss… the officer finally said, his voice heavy with professional calm. You were present during the assault. We need your version of what happened.
Her mouth opened. No sound came out.
The officer watched her for a moment, leaning in slightly, like someone examining a pane of glass to see if it's about to crack or shatter.
— The suspect… he went on, glancing at his screen… One witness claims to have recognized a certain Jeon Sion, twenty-eight years old. Do you know him personally?
She blinked.
Twice.
Slowly.
Then lowered her head.
The officer pressed on, pen poised to scratch the page.
— Miss? Can you confirm that the man who attacked your fiancé is Jeon Sion?
Nari felt her heart skip a beat, then two, then everything blurred together.
She could still feel, on her skin, the heat of Sion's kiss, the weight of his collapse, the desperate strength with laquelle he had wrapped his arms around her.
That acidic lump was climbing back up her throat — burning, sharp, threatening to explode at any second.
It felt like her whole body was vibrating under an invisible shock, like she was walking along the edge of a cliff where the slightest word would send her over.
— I… I don't…
She closed her eyes.
She saw her boyfriend lying on the ground again.
She saw Sion shaking with rage.
She saw the blood.
She saw Sion's tears — the first she had ever seen.
Her fault.
It was all her fault.
— Miss, the officer repeated, tapping the table with the end of his pen. Is it indeed Jeon Sion?
A silence so heavy fell it could have been cut with a knife.
She inhaled, deeply, painfully.
She lifted her head.
Still.
Ice-cold.
Her gaze shattered, but resolute.
— I don't know.
The officer blinked, surprised.
— What do you mean, you don't know? According to the report, you were less than a meter away from the assailant.
— Yes… but I was… shaken… it all happened so fast… I can't confirm, she said in a dead voice, emptied of outrage, emptied of emotion, as if she were speaking from behind glass.
The officer jotted something down, more perplexed than convinced.
— You do understand that by refusing to identify him, you're obstructing our investigation?
Her shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly.
A tiny gesture, but heavy with an enormous truth.
— I can't identify someone I didn't see clearly, she murmured calmly, eyes fixed on the table.
Lie.
A burning lie.
A lie ripping her apart from the inside.
A lie she accepted in silence, breathless.
Because Sion would lose everything.
Because he'd been broken, lost, and he had come to her.
Because despite the violence, despite the horror, despite the darkness — she loved him.
The officer studied her frozen face, her still-trembling hands, then sighed, aware that pushing harder would only make her shut down completely.
— Very well… we'll note that you're not able to recognize the assailant.
A knot loosened in her chest.
Just one.
Tiny.
But real.
She had just protected him.
She had just condemned herself instead.
She had just signed a silent pact with pain.
They let her go shortly after.
Her whole body was shaking as she stepped out of the station, the cool night air slapping her face as if to wake her from a nightmare.
But she knew the real storm was waiting at home.
In two days, she was supposed to get married.
And him…
He would come back.
Inevitably.
Always.
The night air brushed over her face like an icy caress as she left the station, the world around her feeling too calm, too quiet, as if the city itself were holding its breath after the storm she'd just gone through, as if Seoul were watching from a distance this broken woman walking without really walking, her steps heavy, mechanical, like those of a ghost drifting through streets lit by neon.
At the hospital, behind the glass doors that had just closed, her fiancé was lying on a bed, his face warped by bruises — jaw dislocated, missing teeth leaving dark, bloody gaps, his skin marbled with purple bruises that pulsed with every breath. And yet, despite all that violence, all that madness, all that fear, it wasn't his image that looped endlessly in Nari's head.
It was Sion's.
Sion disappearing into the crowd.
Sion's ragged breathing still trembling on her lips after their torn-apart kiss.
Sion shaking with rage and pain, his gaze wild but cracked.
Sion letting a tear fall — the first, the only one, the one that had destroyed her more surely than all the blows.
And she…
She had just laid a lie down in front of the police.
She had just protected him.
She had just sealed something irreversible.
Reality hit then — brutal, relentless, like a fist to her chest.
Everything was her fault.
Not Sion's.
Not the man she was supposed to marry.
Hers.
Because she had given in.
Because she had loved elsewhere, loved harder, loved more truly, loved until she lost her mind, lost her morals, lost her loyalty, lost her limits.
Because in Sion's arms, she had felt a truth she was never meant to know — a burning lack, a devastating pull, a desire that made her both alive and dangerous.
She felt dirty.
Dirty for loving the man who had nearly killed the one who had given her everything.
Dirty for learning that tenderness could be violent, that passion could be destructive, that life could tilt in a single golden glance.
Since the day he walked into her life, everything had collapsed.
She had laughed less, cried more, screamed in silence, hoped for the impossible.
Her naïve softness from before had vanished, replaced by a hungry void that never filled, except when he was there, when he breathed against her, when his dark gaze sank into hers like a promise of the end of the world.
Her fiancé's laughter, his tenderness, his simple love — it was all becoming foreign, dull, lukewarm to her.
Like pale shadows in a world that had become too scorching, too alive.
And she understood a terrible truth.
They say that when pain becomes too strong, it's a sign that change is coming, and that without pain, change doesn't exist — a rebirth in the flames that leaves scars forever.
She went back home with her body emptied out, her mind in ruins, each step heavier than the last.
Two days before the wedding.
Two days before binding herself to a man she could no longer look at without feeling the bite of guilt, without hearing Sion's echoes in her head, his deep voice murmuring I want you, I hate you.
Her fiancé, despite his battered face, had refused to postpone the date, whispering that he wanted her to become his wife as soon as possible, as if he could sense he would lose her for good if he let go of her hand for even a second.
He behaved as if nothing had happened, deliberately ignoring the horror, the betrayal, the fractures — as if he preferred illusion over reality.
Nari, meanwhile, walked like someone heading toward a sentence.
In her silent apartment, she folded her wedding dress, fingers trembling over the immaculate fabric, her heart squeezed by a pain she no longer had the strength to deny.
And it was exactly then, in that moment, that everything shifted.
A sharp knock against the door.
A knock that rang all the way down her spine.
A knock that made her hands shake and sent the dress tumbling to the floor.
She knew immediately.
Even before looking through the peephole.
Even before hearing his breath.
Sion.
And she… she was two days away from getting married.