Jaewon stands before the espresso machine, hands moving through a routine learned long ago. Grind. Tamp. Lock. Brew. The motions are precise, practiced, almost mechanical. The café hums with its usual late-morning rhythm. Cups clink. Milk steams. Customers murmur over quiet conversations. None of it reaches him.
His mind is elsewhere, as it has been for years.
Three years have passed since everything ended, yet the past has never loosened its grip. It lingers in him like cold soaked into bone, something no warmth can reach. Even now, without warning, it rises. A name. A memory. A voice he has not heard in years.
Today makes it worse.
He had noticed the date the moment he woke. He always does. No reminder needed. No calendar required. The number settles in his chest the instant consciousness returns, heavy and undeniable.
February twenty-eighth.
He does not speak it. He never does. The acknowledgment exists only in silence.
Another year.
Another birthday passing unmarked.
He pours a finished espresso into a cup and slides it across the counter. The customer thanks him. He nods automatically. The voice barely registers. Everything feels slightly distant today, as if a thin sheet of glass has slipped between him and the world.
He wipes the counter. Aligns cups. Refills beans. Each task buys a few seconds of distraction. Nothing lasts. Thoughts circle back, persistent and unwelcome.
There had been a time when birthdays meant planning. Quiet dinners. Awkward gifts. Laughter that came easily. He remembers candles reflected in dark eyes. A shy smile over cake. The warmth of shared space that had once felt permanent, unquestioned.
He presses the cloth harder against the counter, knuckles whitening.
That life belongs to someone else now. Someone younger. Someone who had not yet learned how easily love could fracture beyond repair.
"Jaewon-ssi?"
He looks up slightly. Hana stands near the pastry case, watching him.
"You've wiped that spot for like five minutes," she says gently. "You're going to erase the counter."
He exhales faintly, forcing a small, apologetic smile. "Sorry. Just distracted."
"Bad sleep again?"
"Something like that."
She studies him another moment, concern present but not intrusive. Hana has learned when not to pry. She nods and returns to arranging cakes.
Jaewon turns away. The small television mounted high in the corner flickers through a midday news cycle. He does not usually look at it. National updates, politics, markets. Noise. Irrelevant to a life reduced to shifts and survival.
Today his eyes drift upward anyway.
Not from interest. Just from absence of anything else to hold onto.
At first he does not register what he is seeing. The screen shows aerial footage of a wrecked vehicle on a rain-dark highway. Emergency lights flash blue and red across wet asphalt. Police tape flutters. Reporters cluster beyond barriers.
Another accident. Another tragedy somewhere far away. He begins to look back down.
Then the ticker moves.
White text sliding across black.
He sees the name before his mind allows it meaning.
Jeon Taesan.
Something in his chest stops.
He stares, uncomprehending. The letters pass again. And again. Each repetition lands harder, sinking deeper.
Breaking News: Jeon Taesan, CEO of Altrion Group, killed in late-night collision. Authorities report catastrophic impact. Identification confirmed this morning.
The world tilts.
Sound drops out. The café dissolves into a distant blur of color and movement. All he can see is the screen. All he can read is the name.
No.
It is an immediate, absolute rejection. The kind that rises before thought. Before logic. Before breath.
No.
He steps closer without realizing he has moved. The cloth slips from his hand. It hits the floor unnoticed.
The broadcast continues. A reporter speaks over footage of twisted metal being hauled onto a recovery truck.
"…vehicle struck the barrier at high speed following loss of control during heavy rain. Officials describe the damage as unsurvivable. Emergency responders pronounced the driver deceased at the scene…"
Jaewon's throat closes.
His pulse slams in his ears. Vision narrows. The room wavers as if seen through water.
It cannot be real. Names repeat in media. People share names. Errors happen. Misidentification happens. It has to be wrong. It has to.
The camera cuts to a file photo.
A formal portrait. Dark suit. Composed expression. The face he knows more intimately than his own reflection.
There is no mistaking it.
Breath leaves him in a soundless rush.
"Jaewon?"
Hana's voice comes again, closer now. He does not answer. He cannot turn away from the screen. The reporter continues, words slicing cleanly through whatever remains of denial.
"…Jeon Taesan, aged thirty, founder and chief executive of Altrion Group, widely regarded as one of the country's youngest industry leaders…"
Thirty
The number lands like impact.
He should not be frozen in a photograph. Should not exist in past tense. Should not be reduced to headlines and archival footage.
His hands begin to shake. He reaches the counter and grips its edge hard enough to ache. The surface presses into his palms, the only stable thing left. Air refuses to come properly. Each inhale is shallow, fractured.
No.
Not like this.
Not after everything.
He had already buried that love once. Forced it down. Learned to live with absence. Learned to breathe through distance. Learned to accept that Taesan belonged to a life he could no longer touch.
But this…
This is erasure.
Finality.
No return. No possibility. No someday.
Gone.
"Jaewon…?"
Hana is beside him now. He feels her presence before he sees her. She follows his line of sight upward. Her expression shifts the instant recognition hits.
"Oh," she whispers. "Oh my god…"
Silence stretches between them, thick and fragile.
"Is that…?" She cannot finish.
He nods once. The motion is small, rigid.
Her hand lifts halfway toward his arm, hesitates, then settles there gently. "I'm so sorry."
The words fracture something inside him.
His lips part, but nothing emerges. Language has abandoned him. All that remains is the name repeating in his skull like an echo he cannot stop.
Taesan.
Taesan.
Taesan.
The screen shows wreckage again. Bent steel. Crushed frame. Rain reflecting emergency lights in streaks across mangled metal.
Unsurvivable.
He closes his eyes briefly. Images crash in behind his lids without mercy. Laughter across a table. Fingers brushing his sleeve. A quiet voice saying his name. The warmth of a shoulder against his own. Promises spoken in youth, believed without question.
All of it now severed from the world.
Hana squeezes his arm lightly. "You shouldn't stay," she murmurs. "You're white as paper. Go home. I'll cover."
Home.
The word feels hollow. There is nowhere this can be carried safely. Nowhere the knowledge will weigh less.l
But he cannot remain here under fluorescent lights and strangers' conversations while the world continues unchanged.
He nods again. Movement feels slow, delayed. He removes his apron with unsteady fingers. Hana takes it from him without a word.
"Do you want me to call someone?" she asks quietly.
He shakes his head.
There is no one.
He takes his coat. The bell above the café door rings as he pushes outside. Cold air strikes his face, sharp and immediate. It does not clear anything. It only confirms that the world still exists, brutally indifferent.
Traffic moves. People pass. Somewhere a vendor calls out prices. Ordinary life continues with obscene normalcy.
He walks.
Directionless. Automatic. Pavement underfoot. Breath shallow. Hands numb inside his pockets.
The name continues to echo.
Taesan is dead.
The sentence refuses to settle. It floats above comprehension, too large to contain. Every few steps disbelief surges again. Impossible. Wrong. Reversible. Then memory answers with merciless clarity. The photograph. The footage. The words catastrophic impact.
Dead.
He stops at a crossing without noticing the signal change. Horns sound distantly. He moves when pushed by the crowd's current.
Four years ago he lost Taesan once through his own doing. Betrayal. Distance. Pride. Choices that carved them apart until nothing remained but memory and regret.
He had told himself that was the end.
He had been wrong.
This is the end.
No future reconciliation. No apology offered or refused. No accidental meeting years later. No chance to say what he never said. No possibility of repair.
Everything left unfinished will remain so forever.
His chest tightens until breath becomes effort. He presses a hand against his sternum as if the pressure might hold something in place.
The city blurs around him.
He does not know how long he walks before stopping beneath a streetlight. Evening has begun to gather. He leans against the cold metal pole, head tipped back, eyes fixed on a sky already dimming toward night.
"You said I'll survive," he murmurs, voice barely sound.
The words vanish into traffic noise.
He swallows, throat raw. "But I don't even know how to start."
No answer comes.
Only the distant rush of passing cars and the vast, indifferent sky above a world that has continued without the man who once held his entire heart.
And for the first time since seeing the screen, the truth settles fully.
Taesan is gone.
And nothing in Jaewon's life will ever be the same again.
——————— TO BE CONTINUED