Sleep didn't come easily that night.
Tae-Hyun lay on his back, staring at the soft, shifting light across the ceiling of his room. The projection simulated a distant sky, slow and endless, but it didn't carry the smell of night or the weight of air. It felt like watching memory instead of living inside it.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt her again.
Not as an image.
As presence.
Like someone standing in the next room, close enough that silence itself became shared.
He turned onto his side.
The hum inside him had softened, losing its sharp edges, settling into something quieter and more persistent. It didn't behave like a response anymore. It behaved like awareness.
Somewhere beyond the wall, Eun-chae was breathing.
The thought arrived without effort.
He didn't know how he knew.
He only knew that he did.
He found her the next morning in the corridor outside the residential sector.
She was standing barefoot on the cool floor, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing the pale inner-wing uniform. She looked less like a "host" and more like someone who had simply woken up too early.
"You didn't sleep either," she said when she saw him.
He paused a few steps away.
"Not much."
She smiled faintly, the kind of smile people wear when they don't bother hiding fatigue.
"I kept expecting the building to start talking again," she said. "It didn't. But it felt like it might."
They walked together toward the nutrition station. No escort. No instruction. The inner wing had already learned that separating them made its readings worse.
They took their trays and sat at a small table near the curved wall. Beyond the glass, pale water moved slowly against reinforced barriers, the sea only a suggestion rather than a presence.
For a while, they ate in silence.
The quiet wasn't empty.
It was occupied.
By the awareness of the other person breathing, shifting, existing within reach.
"Before this place," he said eventually, "what did you do?"
She looked surprised by the question.
"Research," she replied. "Neurobiology. Sensory processing. I studied how the brain learns patterns before it understands meaning."
"And before they found you?"
She considered.
"I used to believe the body was a problem to solve," she said. "A machine that kept breaking in interesting ways."
He watched her.
"And now?"
"Now I think it's a language," she said. "One we don't listen to until it starts screaming."
Her fingers traced the edge of the cup.
"What about you?" she asked. "Before W-03. Before Helix."
The name stirred something old and heavy.
"I built things," he said. "Companies. Systems. Futures that were supposed to outlive the people inside them."
"And?"
"And I mistook structure for safety."
She studied him.
"That sounds like someone who learned the hard way."
He didn't deny it.
They were called to testing later than usual.
Not a session.
An evaluation.
The kind designed less to measure data and more to observe behavior.
They were placed in a smaller chamber this time. No central platform. No framework. Just a quiet room, two chairs, and a wall of softly shifting light.
"Remain inside," the technician said. "Interact naturally."
The door closed.
And for the first time since arriving at W-03, they were alone.
No visible cameras.
No active displays.
Only the faint sense of being held within layers of listening architecture.
Eun-chae exhaled.
"That feels strange," she said.
"Yes."
"Like they stepped back," she added. "Which means they're watching harder."
He took a seat.
She sat opposite him.
For a moment, neither spoke.
There was no protocol for this.
No task.
No interface to stabilize.
Just two people inside a room built for observation.
"What happens," she asked quietly, "if what they're building doesn't need me anymore?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Because the question wasn't scientific.
It was human.
"I think," he said slowly, "that what they're building doesn't know yet what it needs."
Her gaze softened.
"And what about you?" she asked. "What happens if it decides it needs you more?"
He met her eyes.
"Then I make sure," he said, "that what it needs from me is not obedience."
Something eased in her expression.
Not relief.
Trust.
She leaned back in her chair.
"When I was first brought here," she said, "I kept a list in my head. Things that were still mine. My name. The way I liked bitter coffee. The sound of rain. The memory of my sister's laugh."
He listened.
"One by one," she continued, "those things stopped feeling anchored. They became… portable. Like I could lose them and still function."
She looked at him.
"You don't feel portable."
The words landed quietly.
He felt them anyway.
"Neither do you," he said.
Her breath slowed.
Something in the space between them settled.
Not the hum.
Something older.
Simpler.
When the door finally opened, the technician studied his display longer than necessary.
"No destabilization," he murmured. "Coherence increased."
He stepped aside.
They walked out together.
Back into the inner wing.
Back into a place that had been designed to reduce people into variables.
And yet, as they moved side by side through its corridors, Tae-Hyun realized something had already happened that no architecture could reverse.
They had begun to see each other not as components…
but as witnesses.