The rain began like an apology.
Not the dramatic kind that arrived with thunder and violence. This rain was quiet, steady—like it had already accepted that no one would look up at the sky and care.
Seo-yeon didn't notice it at first. The sound blended into everything else her life had become: the hum of a cheap refrigerator, the faint buzz of streetlights outside, the occasional footsteps in the hallway of a building that always smelled like old cooking oil and damp shoes.
She sat on the floor of her studio apartment with her back against the wall. Her knees were pulled up, arms wrapped around them in a posture that felt less like comfort and more like containment—as if holding herself together required physical pressure.
On the floor in front of her lay a small pile of paper.
Bills. Notices. Letters with bold headers that used urgency like a weapon.
FINAL.
OVERDUE.
LAST WARNING.
She didn't pick them up.
She didn't read them again.
She already knew what they said.
Her phone lit up.
A notification slid across the screen.
Landlord: Rent overdue. Final warning.
For a moment, she simply stared at it. Not in surprise. Not even in dread. Just… as if the message was a normal weather report.
Rain tomorrow.
You are still broke.
You are still failing.
She locked the phone and set it down beside her, face-down, like she didn't want it looking at her.
Thirty-two.
She turned the number over in her head the way she used to turn algebra problems when she was a student—searching for the logic, the pattern, the answer that made it make sense.
Thirty-two years old.
She was supposed to have something by now, wasn't she?
A job that didn't smell like fried oil or bleach.
A closet that contained more than two uniforms and one "nice" shirt she wore to interviews.
A fridge that wasn't mostly water and expired sauce packets.
A life.
She exhaled.
Her breath sounded too loud in the small room.
There had been a time when her teachers called her bright.
There had been a time when her parents looked at her like she was proof that effort mattered.
Her father, laughing as he said, "Our Seo-yeon is smart."
Her mother, brushing her hair back gently before school: "You can do anything if you don't give up."
She didn't know when the word "smart" became meaningless.
It wasn't one moment. It never was.
People always imagined lives collapsing like buildings—sudden, loud, impossible to miss.
But her life didn't collapse.
It eroded.
One decision that felt harmless at the time.
One day where she stayed in bed because getting up felt like lifting a mountain.
One class missed.
Then two.
Then a whole week.
Then the shame of returning became heavier than the consequences of staying away.
After her parents died, grief didn't come like a wave.
It came like fog.
It wrapped around everything. It made the world muted and distant. It made every movement feel pointless.
And she told herself: Just for now.
Just for now I'll rest.
Just for now I'll pause.
Just for now I'll survive.
But "justfornow" stretched into years.
And then, one day, she woke up and realized she wasn't resting anymore.
She was hiding.
From her own life.
From time.
From the person she used to believe she would become.
She reached for her phone again, not because she wanted to, but because her hand knew the motion like muscle memory. Her thumb slid across the screen, opening the one thing that still worked the way it was supposed to.
A manhwa app.
Bright colors flooded her vision. Covers with perfect faces, sharp jawlines, glowing heroines, rich villains. Titles that promised certainty.
I Regressed and Became a Genius.
My Second Life as a Queen.
Seven Days to Rewrite My Fate.
She stared at them the way someone stared into a warm store window while freezing outside.
Stories where the universe cared enough to offer a redo.
Stories where mistakes were dramatic but fixable.
Stories where pain had a purpose.
She tapped on one without thinking.
The protagonist was crying in the rain, kneeling on a street that looked prettier than any street in real life ever looked. Even suffering was aesthetic here.
On the next panel, the character lifted their head and said, "Iwon'tmakethesamemistakesagain."
Seo-yeon's lips twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Lucky," she whispered.
She scrolled faster, chasing the feeling. Not happiness, she didn't have the energy for that—but numbness. That gentle floating sensation where nothing touched her, where reality couldn't reach her.
The phone battery flashed a warning.
5%
She plugged it in. The charger was old and frayed. It sparked once, tiny and pathetic.
Seo-yeon stared at the spark like it was a punchline only she understood.
"Evenyou," she murmured to the charger. "Evenyouaretired."
She put the phone face-down again.
The room returned to darkness.
The rain continued.
She didn't move for a long time.
Eventually, she stood and opened the drawer beside her bed.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Her handwriting was neat, which almost felt insulting. Even now, she could write properly. Even now, she could appear functional for five minutes at a time.
She unfolded the paper.
The words looked small. Like they didn't belong to her. Like they were written by someone who still believed an apology could fix anything.
I'm sorry.
I tried.
Please forget me.
She read it once.
Then again.
Her throat tightened.
A laugh escaped her—thin, raw, wrong.
"Thisisstupid," she whispered, voice shaking. "What am I evenapologizingfor?"
Her eyes burned.
Tears fell anyway. Silent. Heavy.
She wiped them quickly with her sleeve as if angry at the evidence of her own humanity.
She didn't want to be dramatic.
She didn't want to be a tragedy.
She just wanted it to stop.
She looked around her apartment.
There were no photos on the wall.
No framed memories.
No evidence that anyone had ever loved her enough to leave something behind.
Because after her parents died, there was no one left.
Not really.
Friends were kind at first, in the way people were kind when they didn't know what else to do. Then time passed. And kindness became distance. And distance became silence.
The world moved on.
She did not.
She placed the note back in the drawer and closed it gently, almost politely.
Then she walked to the door.
Her hand wrapped around the doorknob.
She paused.
A memory surfaced like a cruel mercy.
Her mother's hands fixing her collar.
Her father placing a warm bun in her palm on the way to school.
A normal morning.
A normal life.
For a second, her chest tightened so hard she thought she might change her mind.
Then the feeling faded, as all feelings did.
"I'mtired," she whispered.
And she opened the door.
The rain hit her immediately, cold against her skin. It soaked her hair, clung to her clothes, slid down her face like the world was trying to wash her away.
She walked.
Not fast. Not like someone running from something.
Just… walking, as if she had finally accepted her destination.
The streetlights painted the road in smeared gold. Cars passed occasionally, their headlights bright and indifferent.
She stopped at a pedestrian crossing.
The red light glowed above her.
A small, meaningless command: wait.
As if she still had somewhere to go.
She watched the road.
Headlights appeared in the distance.
Bright.
Approaching.
Her breath came out in a slow exhale.
She closed her eyes.
If there is another life…
Her throat tightened.
Please, let it be quieter than this.
She stepped forward.
The world turned into a white flash.
And then—
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Seo-yeon's eyes snapped open.
Sunlight filled the room.
Warm. Gentle.
Birds chirped outside as if nothing terrible had ever happened, as if death wasn't something that waited patiently in calendars.
She stared at the ceiling, gasping.
She was breathing.
She was alive.
Her hands clenched the bedsheets.
They felt different.
Smaller.
She sat up abruptly, dizzy.
The room was wrong—
No.
Not wrong.
Familiar.
The desk in the corner.
The curtains her mother refused to replace.
The bookshelf full of textbooks she hadn't touched in years.
Her heart pounded violently.
She swung her legs off the bed and looked down at herself.
At her arms.
At her hands.
Too small.
Too young.
She stumbled toward the mirror, dread rising like bile.
And saw—
A seventeen-year-old girl staring back.
Her own face, but untouched by years of exhaustion. Skin clear. Eyes wide. A face that didn't yet know how life could ruin a person slowly.
She turned her head sharply.
The calendar on the wall.
June 12.
Her blood ran cold.
Because she knew the next date like a scar.
June 19.
Rain.
Glass.
Sirens.
A hospital corridor.
Two bodies that stopped being warm.
Her lips trembled.
"Seven days…" she whispered.
Her voice cracked.
"…I came back."
And for the first time in fourteen years—
She was afraid to die.