POV: Kang Yejun
The coffee maker breaks again.
Yejun stares at the machine like it personally betrayed him. Which it did. Everything betrays him eventually. He unplugs it, plugs it back in, hits the side like that ever helps anything. The manager, Mr. Kim, watches from the counter with his usual expression of tired pity.
"Just use the backup," Mr. Kim says, not unkindly. "And Yejun, when you come in tomorrow, try to smile more. Customers don't like sad faces with their coffee."
Smile more. As if happiness is something you can just add to the order like extra shots of espresso.
Yejun has worked at this café for three months. Three months of waking up at 4 AM, three months of Mr. Kim not asking why he's so quiet, three months of instant noodles for dinner because café wages barely cover rent. He's sent out forty-two job applications. All rejected. Jihoon's influence is everywhere. It reaches into companies Yejun didn't even know he was blacklisted from.
But this job exists. Mr. Kim doesn't care about scandal. Mr. Kim just cares that the coffee gets made and nobody complains too loudly. For that, Yejun gets paid minimum wage and the privilege of overhearing people talk about their good lives.
The lunch rush arrives.
Today is Tuesday, which means the TV in the corner plays the celebrity news station on repeat. Yejun knows the schedule. Tuesday is when they announce the week's high-society events. Today is different. Today they're announcing the engagement party.
The anchor's voice suddenly turns excited. "Breaking news from Seoul's elite. Kang Industries' new CEO Jihoon has announced an elaborate engagement celebration happening in just three weeks. We have exclusive details on what's being called the wedding of the year."
Yejun's hands freeze around a coffee cup.
The screen shows photos. Jihoon and Minho looking perfectly matched. Looking happy. Looking like they won. The engagement party venue is Lotus Palace, Seoul's most exclusive event space. Guests will include politicians, CEOs, celebrities. The list is long and glittering.
A couple at table six notices Yejun watching the screen. The woman, who's been coming here every Tuesday for weeks, suddenly makes the connection. Yejun sees the moment it happens. Recognition. Her eyes flick from the TV to his face and back again.
She leans toward her friend and whispers.
The whisper becomes a giggle.
The giggle becomes laughter that they don't bother hiding.
Yejun turns away and starts making coffee with mechanical precision. One shot. Two shots. Milk. Foam. Lid. The movements are automatic. His hands know what to do even when his brain is dissolving. The woman who recognized him gets up and comes to the counter.
"Aren't you the guy from the scandal?" she asks, not meanly but not kindly either. Like she's asking about the weather. Like his humiliation is just casual conversation. "The one with the fake boyfriend? Or was it real? I can't remember."
"Just the usual drama," her friend calls from the table, still laughing. "Rich boy loses everything because he's stupid."
Yejun hands over the coffee without making eye contact. The woman leaves a tip that's half of what she usually leaves, which somehow hurts more than no tip at all. It's pity money. Charity for the fallen heir.
After his shift ends, Yejun walks home in the rain.
He forgot his umbrella three months ago and never replaced it. The rain soaks through his café uniform, through the sweater underneath, through skin. He passes through neighborhoods where people are shopping and eating dinner and living normal lives. People who haven't lost everything. People who still have parents who speak to them, still have money, still have a place in society.
Yejun walks for an hour when the apartment is only thirty minutes away. He's not going home. He's avoiding it. Because home is a tiny studio in a bad neighborhood that costs money he can barely afford. Home is where he sits alone every night thinking about how much easier it would be if he just didn't wake up tomorrow.
The thought isn't new anymore. It's becoming familiar. Like an old friend who keeps suggesting that disappearing would solve everything. Maybe his friend is right. Maybe everyone would be better off. Sera wouldn't have to feel responsible for him. His father's company wouldn't have to deal with the stain of his existence. Minho and Jihoon would have a better story without him in it.
He stops on a bridge overlooking the Han River. The water is black and cold and indifferent. Perfect.
His phone buzzes.
Yejun pulls it out with numb fingers. Another rejection email. A job he applied for three weeks ago is informing him that they've decided to go in a different direction. The email uses corporate language that really means: We know who you are and we don't want you.
He deletes it.
The next notification makes him freeze.
It's a news alert.
"UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON: Strange Energy Readings Reported Across Seoul - Scientists Baffled"
Yejun reads the headline twice. The article describes unusual electromagnetic activity in the city's central district. Power fluctuations. Technology glitching. Devices malfunctioning. The phenomenon started three hours ago and is intensifying.
Scientists are calling it unprecedented.
He scrolls to the next notification. It's from an unknown number again. The same number that sent the message three months ago.
"It's time. He's looking for you. The rift is opening. Get ready for what's coming. Your life ends tonight. Everything begins again at midnight."
Yejun stares at the message. His first instinct is to dismiss it as a prank. Some sick person who knows his situation and is enjoying tormenting him. But the message deletes itself again like the last one. No trace. No evidence.
He looks up from his phone.
The sky is doing something wrong.
The clouds are gathering in a perfect circle above the Han River. Not moving naturally but rotating slowly, deliberately, like something is pulling them. The rain suddenly stops. Just stops, mid-drop, like time has frozen. Water droplets hang in the air suspended by nothing. The streetlights flicker and die, then come back on in reverse patterns that shouldn't be possible.
Yejun's heart is racing. He's hallucinating. He must be hallucinating. Three months of despair is finally cracking his mind. He closes his eyes and counts to ten.
When he opens them, the phenomenon is worse.
A tear appears in the air above the river.
Not a tear in the clouds. A tear in reality itself. It's like someone has split the fabric of the world and is pulling the edges apart. Light pours out, not sunlight but something cold and blue and otherworldly. The light moves with intention. It searches. It looks for something.
It looks for him.
Yejun stumbles backward, his phone clattering to the wet pavement. This is impossible. The tear shouldn't exist. Reality doesn't work like this. Matter doesn't simply rip open. But it is. It does. It is happening right in front of him.
Then he hears it.
A child's voice.
Small and desperate and filled with longing.
"Papa? Papa, are you there?"
The voice comes from inside the tear in reality. The voice of someone calling for him. Someone who knows him. Someone who loves him despite Yejun having no idea who they are.
"Papa, I found you! I finally found you!"
Yejun tries to move but his legs won't cooperate. He watches as the tear grows larger, the edges crackling with that blue light. Inside, he can see shapes. A silhouette that might be a child. A larger shadow behind it.
"Papa!" The voice is crying now. "Please tell me you remember! Please tell me you know me! I traveled so far! I searched so long! Papa, I'm here! I'm finally here!"
The tear reaches the size of a door.
Then larger.
The wind picks up, pulling at Yejun's clothes, pulling at his sanity, pulling at everything he thought he understood about how the world works. The child's voice grows louder, more desperate, more real.
And Yejun realizes something that makes his breath catch.
He recognizes this voice.
Not from his life. Not from anything that's happened. But from somewhere deeper. Somewhere that exists in dreams he's forgotten. Somewhere in a timeline that isn't this one.
He knows this child.
He knows this voice.
He's loved this voice.
The tears in his eyes aren't from the rain anymore. They're from recognition of something impossible. Of someone reaching across the boundaries of reality itself to find him.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the tear snaps shut.
The lights come back on normally. The rain resumes its natural fall. The sky clears. The wind dies. Within seconds, the entire event is over. The only evidence it happened is Yejun's racing heart and the phone on the ground.
He picks it up with shaking hands.
There's one final message from the unknown contact.
"He's coming. He's already here. Midnight. Be ready."
And below that, a location.
Yejun reads it over and over, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to understand any of what just happened. He saw something that shouldn't be possible. He heard a voice calling for him across dimensional space.
He felt something change in the universe.
And in three hours, something is going to arrive that will either save him or confirm that he's finally lost his mind completely.
He starts walking toward the address in the darkness.
He has no other choice.