The rooftop was still quiet when Yoon Ha-rin returned that afternoon.
Meetings had come and gone, words had been exchanged, but her thoughts lingered on the way Kang Jae-hyun had looked at her — not with irritation, not with arrogance, but with something softer.
Something dangerously close to longing.
She leaned against the railing, watching the glass skyline shimmer in the distance. The faint wind brushed against her hair, carrying the same elusive scent that had followed her since morning — jasmine, cedarwood, and the faint sweetness of wild grass.
Her chest tightened. Why did that scent feel like a half-remembered dream?
---
Meanwhile, inside his office, Jae-hyun couldn't focus.
He'd read the same email twice, responded to none.
Her voice, her ideas, the look in her eyes when she spoke about "memories that smell like home"… it had shaken something loose inside him.
A flicker of nostalgia he couldn't explain.
That scent — her scent — was the same as the one from his earliest memory: sunlight over a field, laughter echoing through wildflowers, a little girl holding out a paper windmill and saying,
> "Don't cry, Jae-hyunnie. I'll make the wind spin for you."
He rubbed his temple. Impossible.
He'd buried those memories long ago — before his family left Aureum-ri after the accident, before his world became meetings and mergers instead of seashells and sand.
---
At dusk, when the building finally quieted, he found himself walking toward the rooftop again.
Ha-rin was still there, sketching ideas in her notebook, hair glowing gold in the dying light.
"You're still working?" he asked, voice softer than he intended.
She turned, startled. "You scared me, Director."
"Then stop haunting rooftops," he said, smirking, but his tone lacked its usual edge.
"Haunting? Please. I'm brainstorming."
"With the sunset?"
"Sunsets are cheaper than consultants," she replied lightly.
He smiled — a small, genuine smile that caught her completely off guard.
They stood side by side, silent for a while, watching the sun sink behind the skyscrapers.
"Do you ever miss… before all this?" she asked quietly, not meeting his eyes.
"Before?"
"Before life became… competition. Deadlines. Expectations."
He thought for a moment. "Maybe. I used to live somewhere near the sea. A village with endless skies. I don't even remember the name anymore."
Her breath caught. "Aureum-ri?"
He froze. "…How did you—?"
She blinked, equally surprised. "Wait. You… you lived there too?"
He turned to her slowly. The fading light painted her face in soft amber. For a heartbeat, the world tilted — the years, the rivalry, everything shrinking into the single realization that the person standing in front of him had once shared the same patch of sky.
"Then maybe," he murmured, almost to himself, "that's why it feels like I've known you before."
Ha-rin's heart stumbled. "That's ridiculous."
"Probably," he said, smiling faintly. "But tell me, Miss Yoon — why does the scent of jasmine follow you wherever you go?"
She looked away, clutching her notebook tightly.
If only he knew.
If only he remembered that one stormy evening when a little girl had pulled him out of the floodwaters — the night her wrist had been scarred, and her childhood had ended.
But that secret was hers to keep.
For now.
---
The wind whispered through the rooftop garden, scattering petals across their shoes.
Somewhere between memory and tomorrow, the scent of their yesterday lingered — patient, familiar, waiting to be remembered.