The air in the narrow alleyway tasted like ozone and dying embers.
Seo-ah didn't care about the smoke rising from the cuffs of her sweater. She didn't care that her lungs felt like they were breathing in liquid gold. She only cared about the weight of the man in her arms—the heavy, solid reality of Lee Yeon-woo before he became a myth again.
"Don't look at the sky," she whispered, her voice cracking against the fabric of his black trench coat. "Please. Just look at me."
Yeon-woo didn't move. He stood as still as a statue carved from obsidian, his head bowed against hers. But beneath his coat, his heartbeat was accelerating. It wasn't the rhythmic thrum of a human heart; it was the frantic, high-pitched vibration of a star about to go supernova.
"It's 6:01 AM, Seo-ah," he said. His voice was a low, melodic sorrow that vibrated in her very marrow. "The chariot is already at the horizon. I'm already late."
"Then let it leave without you!" Seo-ah pulled back just enough to look at him. A single tear tracked through the dust on her cheek, shimmering with a terrifyingly beautiful orange light. "I spent twenty-four years searching for you in this life. I looked through every historical record, every grainy photograph, every 'myth' that sounded too much like a memory. I found you, Yeon-woo. I finally found you."
Yeon-woo reached out, his hand trembling. As his fingers brushed the stray hairs away from her face, his skin began to shimmer. It wasn't a glow; it was as if his flesh were turning into translucent glass, revealing a core of white-hot fusion beneath.
"And in every one of those lives," he murmured, his eyes locking onto hers with a prehistoric ache, "I told you the same thing. Don't find me."
"I don't listen well. You know that." She tried to smile, but it broke into a sob.
The first sliver of the sun broke over the cathedral spires at the end of the street.
The effect was instantaneous. A pillar of horizontal light hit the brick wall behind them, and Yeon-woo stiffened. The "recall" had begun. The Heavens didn't like their brightest light hiding in the shadows of a mortal city.
"Seo-ah, let go," he pleaded, his voice beginning to echo as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well. "If you're holding me when the sun fully rises, you'll burn. Your soul isn't built for this. It never was."
"Then let it burn!" she screamed, burying her face in his chest. "I'd rather be cinders with you than a ghost without you!"
But the divine was stronger than the desperate.
As the sunlight touched the hem of his coat, the fabric didn't just fall—it became empty. The weight she was clinging to vanished into a burst of blinding, silent heat. There was no explosion, just a sudden, hollow vacuum where a god had been standing.
Seo-ah collapsed onto the cobblestones, her arms wrapping around nothing but a discarded black coat that still smelled of cedar and ozone.
Above her, the sky was a violent, bruised gold. The sun sat high and indifferent, watching the girl who remembered everything weep for the god who was forced to forget.
One Month Later
The Seoul Metropolitan Museum was too quiet.
Seo-ah adjusted the magnification on her microscope, her eyes stinging from hours of staring at a silver tetradrachm from the 4th century BC. On the face of the coin was the sun god, Apollo. Even in weathered metal, the eyes looked mocking.
"Seo-ah? You still here?"
She looked up as her supervisor, Min-ho, poked his head into the restoration lab.
"The new Board Director is doing his walkthrough. He's the one who basically bought us this entire wing. Put the coin away and try to look like you haven't been living on caffeine and spite for a month."
Seo-ah wiped her palms on her lab coat and stood up. She didn't expect much. Corporate directors were usually bored men in expensive suits who wanted tax write-offs.
The door swished open.
A man walked in. He was tall, wearing a sharp, charcoal-grey suit that fit him with military precision. His hair was styled back, revealing a forehead that had never known a drop of divine sweat.
Seo-ah felt the world tilt. The oxygen left the room.
It was him.
The same jawline. The same slight curve of the nose. Even the way he carried his shoulders was identical to the man who had vanished in her arms thirty days ago.
"Director Lee," Min-ho beamed, stepping forward to shake his hand. "This is our lead restorer, Han Seo-ah. She's the one currently working on the Hellenistic collection."
The man turned his gaze toward her. His eyes—once full of eternal longing—were now flat, professional, and chillingly polite.
"Nice to meet you, Ms. Han," he said. He extended a hand. His skin was cool. There was no shimmer. No heat. Just the dry, artificial touch of a stranger. "I'm Lee Yeon-woo. I've heard you're the best at finding things that were thought to be lost forever."
Seo-ah stared at his hand. Her heart, scarred by three thousand years of the same tragedy, hammered against her ribs.
He doesn't remember. The curse had reset. The sun had risen, and as always, Apollo had returned to the world with a clean slate, while she was left to carry the fire alone.
"Director?" Yeon-woo prompted, his eyebrow arching slightly at her silence.
Seo-ah took a breath that felt like swallowing glass, reached out, and shook the hand of the man she had died for a dozen times over.
"I am, Director," she whispered, her eyes burning with a secret he no longer shared. "And I don't plan on losing anything else this time."