Chapter 97 – The Stillness Where I Chose to Disappear
POV: Jaeheon Kang
The article reached him by 9:14 AM.
He didn't look for it.
Didn't check his name.
Didn't scroll hashtags.
But her AI system — the one she designed, sleek and merciless — had flagged every mention of him in real time. On the obsidian-glass screen in her living room, the headline hovered in stark silence.
Where Is Kang Jaeheon? The Idol Who Vanished in Italy
He stared at it.
Not with shock. Not with fear.
Just… acknowledgment.
Like a man watching waves climb the shore he'd willingly abandoned.
The morning light had crept in slowly through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She hadn't returned. Not since the pre-dawn hours when she'd left without a word, leaving him alone in her world of sharp lines and perfect cold.
He didn't move much.
Just sat there — barefoot, dressed in black, surrounded by a quiet so absolute it had shape.
The article scrolled on. The rumors. The theories. The fandom's obsession.
Her.
Always her.
Even when they didn't know her name.
Even when the world tried to fill in the blank he'd left for years.
Maybe she's the reason he disappeared.
They weren't wrong.
But they didn't know the half of it.
He reached for the black envelope again.
The one she'd left before leaving him behind in her space like something she wasn't ready to throw away yet.
Don't answer the door for anyone but me.
He'd read it thirty times. Folded and unfolded the card until the edges softened.
It wasn't affection.
Wasn't care.
It was a line. A rule. A restriction.
And still — it made something in his chest burn.
He should have left days ago. Returned to Seoul. To cameras. To the members who hadn't called because they knew better than to ask where he went.
But he couldn't move.
Not when she let him stay.
Not when the silence here felt more honest than anything the world had ever given him.
By 10:41 AM, he was still seated in the same chair.
Still staring at nothing.
The lyric book lay open on the table.
He hadn't written anything since yesterday.
What was the point? He had already written a hundred songs she would never hear.
A hundred songs she already lived in.
At 12:03 PM, the front door clicked.
He didn't rise.
Didn't brace.
He knew.
He could feel it in the change in the air — how even the oxygen realigned when she entered.
Her footsteps were precise. Measured.
She paused when she saw the screen.
Paused longer when she saw him unmoved.
Then —
She walked past him.
Straight into the kitchen. Quiet. Controlled.
She didn't speak.
And neither did he.
He didn't ask where she'd been.
She didn't ask why he was still here.
The silence between them held all the answers the world was screaming for.
He watched her take a glass from the shelf, fill it halfway, and drink.
As if the article didn't exist.
As if the world hadn't noticed him vanishing.
As if nothing between them was real — or maybe too real to speak aloud.
Finally, as she moved to pass him again — he spoke.
One word.
Soft. Steady.
"I'm not going back."
She stopped.
Didn't turn.
Didn't reply.
But she didn't reject it either.
She just stood there — still as a blade before it cuts.
Then, after a breathless beat—
She walked away.
And he let her go.
Because staying didn't need a reason anymore.
She hadn't asked for him to stay.
But she hadn't told him to leave.
And for Jaeheon Kang—
That was more than permission.
That was the beginning of devotion.