The cold was no longer a sensation; it was a state of being. The wind off the Han River acted like a persistent debugger, stripping away every layer of the "Ice Prince" persona until there was nothing left but the raw, unoptimized code of my own grief.
My grandmother had always been the one to handle my silences. When I was ten and refused to speak to the kids at school, she didn't scold me. She simply sat beside me and peeled oranges, the citrus scent cutting through the tension of my young mind. She was the only one who understood that my quietness wasn't a wall, but a sanctuary.
When I felt Danoh's hand settle over mine, the contrast was jarring. My skin was numb, but her palm was a localized heat source, a sudden surge of power into a system that had been running on a backup battery for five years.
I looked down at our joined hands. Her fingers were small, her skin pale against the white of my bandages. For a second, a dangerous, impulsive thought crossed my mind—to tighten my grip, to pull her closer until the winter disappeared.
But I wasn't there yet. The system was too unstable.
Slowly, almost mechanically, I slid my hand out from under hers. It wasn't a rejection; it was a retreat. I couldn't handle that much warmth yet. Not when the memory of my grandmother's cooling hand at that dinner table was still so vivid. I pulled my hands back into the sleeves of my hoodie, hunching my shoulders.
"You shouldn't be out here," I said, my voice finally regaining some of its usual gravel. "It's getting dark. The temperature is dropping."
Danoh didn't flinch at the sudden distance. She was patient—infuriatingly, beautifully patient. "I've spent the last three winters pretending I didn't feel the cold, Hanbin. I can handle a few more minutes."
I turned my head to look at her. Her nose was red from the wind, and her eyes were bright, searching mine for a sign of the person I usually pretended to be.
"Jeonghan tells me everything," she said softly. "But he didn't have to tell me you were hurting. I saw it in the lab. I saw it the way you looked at the chalkboard this morning. You looked like you were waiting for someone to delete you from the room."
I let out a short, dry breath that was almost a laugh. "Maybe I was. Sometimes it feels like it would be more efficient. No grief. No variables. Just... null."
"The world doesn't work on binary, Hanbin," she replied, her voice firm. "There's a whole spectrum between zero and one. You saved me last night. That wasn't an 'efficient' choice. It was a human one. It was a 'Little Star' choice."
I winced at the nickname. Hearing it from her made it feel real again, as if my grandmother had whispered it into the wind.
"I don't know how to do this," I admitted, staring at my bruised, bandaged knuckles. "I don't know how to celebrate being alive when she isn't. I feel like every year I survive is a theft from her."
"It's not a theft," Danoh said. She stood up, brushing the frost off her coat. She didn't reach for my hand again, and for some reason, the absence of her touch felt heavier than the weight of it. "It's a legacy. She bought you that laptop because she wanted to see what you would build. So, build something. Even if today all you build is the strength to walk back to the car."
She waited. She didn't pressure me. She just stood there, a small, stubborn constant in the middle of my chaotic anniversary.
I stood up. My knees felt stiff, and my head felt light from the lack of food and the emotional drain of the day. For a moment, the world tilted—the same way it had when I was sprinting toward her apartment the night before.
Danoh moved instinctively, her hand hovering near my elbow, but she didn't grab me. She gave me the space to find my own balance.
"I'm okay," I muttered, straightening my hoodie.
"I know you are," she said. "But even the strongest servers need a maintenance break. Let's go. My uncle is probably pacing the floor, and Doyoon won't stop asking if 'Hyung' is coming over for dinner."
"I didn't say I was coming over," I said, though there was no bite in the words.
"You didn't say you weren't," she countered, a tiny, brave smile playing on her lips.
We walked back toward the parking lot where Jeonghan was likely waiting in his car, hiding around the corner to give us 'privacy.' The silence between us was different now. It wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence of the morning. It was a quiet, tentative bridge.
I wasn't in love with her. I couldn't afford to be. My life was a mess of logic gates and trauma, and she was a girl who had enough of her own ghosts to carry. But as I watched her walk a step ahead of me, her silhouette brave against the gathering dark, I felt a flicker of something new.
It wasn't a spark. It was more like a line of code that had finally compiled without an error.
She was a variable I hadn't accounted for, but she was the only one that made the rest of the equation make sense.
"Danoh?" I called out as we reached the pavement.
She stopped and turned, her hair blowing across her face. "Yeah?"
"Thanks," I said. It was a simple word, but it felt like I was handing her a piece of the armor I had spent years building. "For... the maintenance."
She laughed, a soft sound that cut through the winter air. "Anytime, Hanbin. Anyime."
As we got into the car, I felt the familiar presence of Jeonghan in the front seat, his eyes moving between us in the rearview mirror. I didn't say anything. I just leaned my head against the cold glass of the window.
Today was December 22nd. I was twenty years old. My grandmother was gone. But for the first time in five years, when I closed my eyes, I didn't just see the darkness of the dining room.
I saw a girl standing in a hallway, wrapped in a police blanket, telling me I was her light.
The system was still far from stable, but for the first time, I didn't want to shut it down.