Their voices blended into the hum of the train, steady and soft, the kind of conversation that moved without effort. She laughed once, a small sound quickly smothered by her hand, and the old man's shoulders shook with quiet amusement.
They didn't speak loudly, but there was warmth in every word they traded, warmth Baeksan could feel even without listening.
Baeksan's eyes drifted toward them, careful, sideways glances that darted away whenever the weight of their connection grew too heavy to bear. To him, it looked like a picture torn from another life: a girl with black hair and those uncanny red eyes, leaning forward shyly, her smile genuine, and across from her the old man, not as sharp or severe as before, but softened, almost gentle. Like a father who'd finally found someone worth speaking to after years of silence.
When Baeksan looked again, the man's eyes weren't fixed on the girl anymore. They were fixed on him.
But this time, they weren't piercing, they weren't testing. They weren't the kind of eyes that stripped him bare with questions about survival. No—they looked at him with something quieter. Something softer. There was worry in them, faint but unmistakable. Concern.
It rattled him more than any of the cruel hypotheticals ever had. Why? Why now?
His chest tightened, and his thoughts stumbled over themselves, chasing answers that didn't exist. Maybe it was because of her. Maybe it was her smile, her presence, the way she filled the space between them with something almost normal. Maybe she was the reason his edges dulled, why he looked at Baeksan not as a student to prepare, but as a person teetering too close to something unseen.
Or perhaps it wasn't that simple. Perhaps it wasn't just her smile or her voice. Maybe she wasn't simply coincidence. Maybe she was the key.
The thought slid into his mind like a whisper: maybe this is fate.
Baeksan kept his gaze steady, staring back just long enough to feel the weight of it before breaking away. He didn't trust fate.
He didn't believe in it. But as the girl's laughter chimed again, and the old man leaned closer to answer her with a warmth Baeksan had never seen from him before, a seed of unease burrowed in his chest.
If she could change the man who had haunted his mornings, then what else could she change?
And why did that terrify him almost as much as it comforted him?
The train swayed gently as it slipped out of the tunnel, the rhythm of wheels against tracks making their voices blur into the background hum.
The old man leaned forward, lips parting as though he were about to say something important, something weighted. Baeksan caught the first syllable on his tongue—but it never landed.
A sharp crack rang from the far end of the carriage. A bottle? A fist slamming the window?Whatever it was, it silenced the air at once. All heads turned. The cheerful chatter died.
A man stood near the doors, his face twisted in fury. His jacket was half-torn, his movements jerky, like his body was too small to contain his rage. He shoved past a commuter, hard enough to send the poor man staggering into the wall. Then again, another shove, this one rougher.
"Out of my way!" His voice ripped through the carriage, rough, uneven, already hoarse from shouting.
He was heading their way.
Each step seemed heavier than the last, boots thudding against the floor, rattling through Baeksan's chest. The crowd parted reluctantly, passengers drawing back into their seats, pulling bags closer, faces turned to the ground as if that would make them invisible.
But the man didn't look at anyone else. His eyes were locked straight ahead.
Straight at them.
Straight at us.
Baeksan's pulse spiked. He could feel the air shifting, heavy, darker. The girl at his side tensed, her cheerful expression faltering for the first time since she'd spoken to him.
She stole a glance toward the old man as though searching for direction, but the old man didn't move.
No questions this time. No cryptic riddles. He simply sat there, calm as the storm marched closer, his hands folded loosely in his lap, eyes fixed on the furious figure cutting through the crowd.
Baeksan flicked his gaze between them—the approaching man, the girl shifting uneasily beside him, and the old man whose expression held not even a flicker of fear.
That warmth from before lingered still, but now it felt like something else. Not fatherly, not soft. It was the kind of warmth a fire had when you were too close to it—comforting if you stayed still, devastating if you moved wrong.
And as the distance closed, Baeksan found himself wondering not what the old man had meant to say, but whether he was about to see it unfold instead.
The man's shouts didn't stop. Each time he barked, the words grew more indistinct, less language and more raw sound, like an animal tearing itself out of its own throat.
People flinched when his voice hit them, shoulders curling inward, bodies pressed tighter against the poles and seats.
Baeksan shifted his eyes, not his head, letting them move past the girl and the old man toward the noise.
From his seat, he couldn't see much—just the top of heads being shoved forward, shoulders stumbling, a ripple running through the carriage like a wave.
He leaned ever so slightly, as if a millimeter might clear the view. His knees stayed locked. His hands didn't move. But his gaze followed the cracks opening in the crowd, each body forced aside, each face snapping downward to avoid the man's eyes.
For a breath, Baeksan saw him clearly between two passengers. The man's face was flushed a deep, ugly red. His teeth bared with every shout, spit flying from the corners of his mouth. A wide scar split across his cheek like a pale slash of chalk. His fists swung at the air, hitting shoulders, bags, anything in his way.
And still, he was coming forward. Step after step.
Baeksan's stomach coiled, but his expression never shifted. Blank. Wide eyes flicking, calculating, never landing long enough to betray his thoughts.
He tried to see past the man, past the swaying crowd behind him—to gauge whether this was just one person's storm, or something bigger trailing in its wake.
But the bodies swallowed everything else. All he caught were fragments—a glimpse of a frightened child pulled behind her mother's legs, the glint of a phone shaking in someone's hand as they tried to pretend they weren't recording, a flash of the emergency exit sign reflected in glass.