POV: Kang Yejun
Haneul's eyes snap open.
The child sits up suddenly, gasping like he's forgotten how to breathe. His silver eyes are wild and panicked, searching the darkness of the studio apartment for something that isn't there.
"Papa! Daddy! Where are you?" His voice cracks with terror. "The accident is happening again. The machine is breaking. Papa, we have to leave. We have to—"
"Haneul, baby, breathe," Yejun says, moving on instinct. He sits on the bed and pulls the child against his chest. Haneul is shaking so hard his teeth chatter. "You're safe. You're with me."
"But Daddy is at the lab. The machine is failing. I can feel it through the dimensional frequency. Papa, he's going to—" Haneul's sobs become gasps. "He's going to die again. I can't lose him again. I can't."
Kaien appears in the apartment doorway, moving with controlled urgency. He sits on the other side of Haneul, sandwiching the child between them. "I'm here. I'm right here, baby boy. The accident that happened to your Daddy didn't happen to me. I'm alive. I'm safe."
"But what if it does?" Haneul's eyes plead with both of them. "What if this timeline's accident happens? What if I'm not here to warn you?"
Kaien exchanges a look with Yejun over the child's head. It's a look that says: We need to explain everything. Now.
It takes an hour to calm Haneul enough to sleep again. Once he's restless under the blanket, Kaien moves to the chair while Yejun sits on the bed's edge, still feeling the ghost of the child's panic.
"Tell me everything," Yejun says. "Don't explain it like I'm stupid. Just tell me the truth."
Kaien takes a breath. "My parents were quantum physicists. They studied parallel dimensions and the possibility that consciousness exists across multiple universes simultaneously. When I was eight, they died in a lab accident that was reported as malfunction but was actually their research coming too close to something real."
He pulls out his phone, showing Yejun photos of research documents, equations written in his parents' handwriting, videos of experiments.
"I spent my life trying to continue their work," Kaien continues. "Trying to understand what killed them and what they discovered. I founded my company specifically to study quantum phenomena. Six months ago, we were running a dimensional stability test when the machine malfunctioned. A rift opened in my private lab at midnight."
"And Haneul came through," Yejun says.
"He appeared inside a containment field with no warning. No explanation. Just a five-year-old child with silver eyes, calling for his parents in a language that's Korean but not quite." Kaien's voice is rough. "He described a timeline where he was born to two men who loved each other. Where his Papa had warm brown eyes and his Daddy had silver eyes. Where they raised him in a beautiful home overlooking a river."
Yejun's chest tightens.
"He remembered specific things," Kaien says. "The way you made pancakes on Sundays. The bedtime stories you told. The way I would do science experiments to make you laugh. The way we were happy until the accident at my lab killed us both."
"How is that possible?" Yejun whispers.
"My parents theorized that love creates quantum bridges," Kaien says. "That certain souls are designed to find each other across dimensional frequencies. That in infinite universes, there are infinite versions of us that choose each other. Haneul is proof. He exists because in another timeline, we found each other and built something that mattered enough to echo across universes."
Yejun stands, pacing the small space. "This is insane."
"Completely," Kaien agrees. "But you felt the electricity when we touched. You heard the conviction in Haneul's voice. Some part of you knows this is real."
"What do you want from me?" Yejun asks, though he already knows.
Kaien studies him with silver eyes that seem to glow in the apartment's dim light. "I need Haneul to believe that somewhere, he has parents who love him. Right now, he's grieving versions of us that don't exist here. He's traumatized and lonely. I can try to be both mother and father, but he needs you. He needs the person he remembers as his Papa."
Yejun looks at Haneul sleeping fitfully. The child's face is peaceful when he's not having nightmares. Small and vulnerable and desperately in need of someone to choose him.
An idea forms. Dangerous and brilliant.
"What if we made it official?" Yejun says slowly. "What if instead of me just comforting him, we made it look real? I move in. We become a family in public. We attend events together. Society sees us as a couple building a life with a child."
Kaien's expression shifts. "That would require commitment."
"I have a reason," Yejun says. He explains everything. The engagement party in three weeks. Minho and Jihoon celebrating their victory. Society laughing at his humiliation.
"I need to show up with someone perfect," Yejun says. "Someone powerful. Someone they'll envy. Someone who makes it clear that I won, not them."
"And I fit that description?"
"You're a billionaire tech genius. You're beautiful. You look at me like I matter." Yejun meets his eyes. "You're everything Minho wasn't."
Kaien stands and moves closer. "How long?"
"Three months. Through the engagement party and long enough to make it convincing. Then we can figure out what comes next."
"And what about Haneul?" Kaien's voice is careful. "How do you feel about a child calling you Papa? About performing that role every day?"
Yejun thinks about the weight of Haneul's small body against his chest. The way the child said "Papa" like it was the safest word in any universe.
"It won't be performing," Yejun says honestly. "I'll take care of him. I'll love him. Not as a show. Just because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't."
Something shifts in Kaien's expression. Softens. "You're a better person than you think, Yejun."
"I'm using you for revenge."
"You're protecting a traumatized child and building something that might become real." Kaien extends his hand. "So we have a deal?"
Yejun takes it.
The moment their skin touches, electricity sparks between them. Real electricity. Not metaphorical. It travels up Yejun's arm and settles in his chest like something waking up after a long sleep.
"Three months," Kaien says, his voice dropping lower. "And then what?"
"I don't know," Yejun admits. "But I want to find out."
They stand there with their hands joined, both feeling the impossible connection, both understanding that they've just made a choice that will either save them or destroy them.
That's when Yejun's phone buzzes.
Then Kaien's phone buzzes.
Both of them pull out their devices simultaneously. Both messages are the same.
From Kaien's security team: "Sir, we have a situation. Your building is being watched. Someone parked outside forty minutes ago. Surveillance identifies him as Kang Jihoon. He's making calls. He's waiting for something."
From an unknown contact on Yejun's phone: "Hello, brother. I know you're at Seo Kaien's place. I know about the child. I know about the quantum research. And I'm about to make your life much worse than it already is. Watch your window in 30 seconds."
Yejun runs to the window.
Below, in the street, Jihoon stands under a streetlight. He's on the phone, his expression vicious and satisfied. Behind him, unmarked vehicles are pulling up. Police cars. Security forces. Government officials.
But it's not the vehicles that make Yejun's blood freeze.
It's the fact that Jihoon is looking directly at their window. Smiling.
And raising his phone to broadcast something live on social media.
Yejun hears it before he reads it. The notification sound of a thousand people watching. A thousand comments appearing in real time.
Jihoon has just posted a video titled: "The Billionaire's Secret Lab: Illegal Experiments and Missing Children."
And the video is about Kaien.
About Haneul.
About all of them.
Kaien appears beside him, watching the chaos unfold below. His face has gone completely still. The kind of still that comes right before an explosion.
"We're out of time," Kaien says quietly.
Behind them, Haneul wakes up again. He doesn't scream this time. He just whispers: "Papa. Daddy. He's coming. The bad man from my timeline. He's coming through the rift again."
And Yejun realizes something that makes his heart stop.
In Haneul's timeline, there was someone who wanted to hurt them. Someone who wanted Haneul. Someone who never got caught.
Someone who Jihoon might actually be.
The doorbell downstairs buzzes.
Then it buzzes again.
And a voice comes through the speaker, official and cold: "This is Seoul Police. We have a warrant to search these premises. Open the door immediately."