Once named, the world tightens around them.
People glance too long. Cameras blur. Reflections linger where they shouldn't. Mira's colleagues speak to her carefully now, like someone who might fracture if pressed.
Hiyoon grows heavier with each passing day.
"I don't disappear anymore," he says one night. "I think I've crossed over."
"And I'm still here," Mira replies.
"Yes," he says softly. "But not unchanged."
She forgets the smell of her childhood home. The sound of her mother's laugh. Things that once grounded her slip away, traded for the certainty of his presence.
"You don't regret it," Hiyoon says.
"No," she admits. "But I understand it now."
Understanding doesn't lessen the cost.
It only makes it honest.