Seoul, Present Day.
Rain whispered against the glass like a memory trying to get in. The city outside was dim. Wet streets shone with cold reflections. Neon signs flickered like fading thoughts. In the heart of a cluttered studio apartment, which smelled faintly of instant coffee and old paper, Seo Yuna stared at a text message on her phone.
You didn't even come to the hospital.
Sent: Today, 03:11 AM
A year of silence.
And this was how it started again?
Yuna sat frozen on her mattress. The sheets were wrinkled, untouched by sleep. Her laptop blinked on the desk across the room, taunting her with its blank document titled: Final Thesis Draft, Due In Two Days.
She hadn't written a word.
Instead, she sat here, haunted by a message from a number she had deleted a long time ago but could still recite by heart.
Her phone buzzed again.
Seen: 03:13 AM
No follow-up. No apology. No explanation. Just that sentence. One sentence that hit harder than any scream.
She clenched her jaw, tossing the phone onto the bed as if it had burned her fingers.
One Year Ago, Sungsan University Campus
The sky that day had been painfully blue.
Yuna remembered it well—too well.
At twenty-three, in her final year, she was known among professors for her award-winning prose and among classmates for her refusal to date anyone. "Writers fall in love with sadness," someone had joked about her once.
She laughed as if it didn't sting.
Then came Lee Jiho. Nineteen, a psychology freshman. Quiet. Always sitting in the corner during the Creative Arts elective. The kind of handsome that made girls whisper and professors frown—too beautiful to be taken seriously, too still to be normal.
She noticed him only because he didn't notice her back.
Until he did.
"You're watching me again," he said one afternoon, his voice smooth but ready to break.
Yuna blinked, startled. Her pen paused mid-word.
"You're... in my line of sight."
Jiho tilted his head. "You always say that. But the angle says otherwise."
He was arrogant, she thought. But his eyes—dark and unreadable—held something familiar. Pain maybe. Or anger shaped into calm.
"You're the one staring now," she shot back.
He smiled. "I learn best that way."
It was supposed to be a one-time exchange. But it wasn't.
Weeks passed. Conversations turned into coffee. Coffee morphed into late-night walks along the Han River. Jiho spoke of childhood like it was fiction. Parents who treated silence as law. A brother who never made it to twenty.
"Is it wrong if the only time I feel seen is when someone's in pain?" he once asked her.
Yuna had stayed quiet that night. Not because she didn't understand—but because she did.
Her own past was a buried manuscript. A father who vanished. A mother who wore her grief like perfume. Yuna learned young that no one waited for you to cry.
And Jiho? He never cried.
Present Day, Yuna's Apartment
She still hadn't responded.
The phone lay next to her again. Its presence felt louder than the rain.
Why now?
He was supposed to be gone. She had erased him from every part of her life—her gallery, her journals, her drafts. She had even avoided the campus benches they used to sit on.
But memories were cruel. They always found a way home.
Flashback, Six Months Into Their Relationship
The first time Jiho disappeared, he left behind 18 missed calls and a shattered mirror in her apartment bathroom.
He returned two days later with a stitched lip and a dead look in his eyes.
"Got into a fight," he said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.
"With who?"
"Does it matter?" He smiled then, like he wanted her to ask but hoped she wouldn't.
Yuna nearly walked away that night.
But she didn't. When he held her wrist, begging her not to leave, his voice trembled like a boy's.
And she always had a soft spot for broken boys.
Present Day
The message still sat there, unread. But she had read it 23 times.
She opened the gallery folder she promised herself never to open again.
"Archive – Don't."
Inside were pictures of Jiho in dim café lighting, sketching in her notebook. Jiho sleeping on her couch. Jiho's hand, bruised, wrapped around hers in a hospital room from that one night they never talked about.
She had written poems about that hand.
She clicked back to the message. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard.
She started typing:
Why now?
Then deleted it.
Instead, she typed:
Are you okay?
She didn't send it.
She waited. Waited for her courage to stop shaking. Then her screen lit up again.
I thought you'd block me. You always were good at running.
She stared at the words, her pulse a slow hammer in her chest.
Her fingers trembled as she typed:
Tell me what happened that night. The truth.
Three dots blinked.
Then vanished.
One Year Ago, The Night Everything Changed
There was rain. Just like tonight.
They argued again. Yuna wanted him to report his father. Jiho wanted her to leave it alone.
"You're not a therapist," he snapped.
"And you're not a punching bag!"
That was when he grabbed her wrist. Tight. Not to hurt—but not gently, either.
Then something crashed—his phone.
Then someone screamed—her.
Then a car.
They were both on the street. He was yelling. She was crying. She stepped back without looking.
Screech.
A scream.
Black.
When she woke up, Jiho was gone. So was his number.
She never visited the hospital.
Present Day
Yuna stood now, walking to the window, pressing her fingers to the foggy glass. Her breath left tiny clouds on the pane.
The message thread was still open.
Then—
Her phone buzzed again.
I didn't call you because I wanted to see if you'd come. You didn't.
Yuna's heart dropped.
So he had been waiting. In that hospital. Alone.
A memory flashed. Jiho in the rain. His lip cut. His hand trembling.
Maybe she was the villain in someone's story.
Maybe this one.