The reflection shifted as Min-jae moved.
At first, only a bare foot appeared along the mirror's lower edge.
He stopped.
The foot was his.
Of course it was his.
He had watched it take the step.
Still, something about it looked wrong.
Narrower.
The skin smoother.
The ankle less thick than he remembered.
Min-jae stared down at his actual feet, then back at the reflection.
He took another step.
Both lower legs entered the glass.
The lounge trousers hung loosely around them. His calves lacked the faint bulk they had developed during military service and retained through years of commuting, occasional gym memberships and carrying groceries home because paying delivery fees felt irresponsible.
His legs looked younger.
"No."
Min-jae whispered the word before he understood what he was denying.
He advanced again.
His hands appeared next.
They hung rigidly beside his body.
Min-jae raised one slowly.
The reflection did the same.
The fingers were long and slim. The nails neatly cut. The skin across the back of the hand lacked the dryness, faint veins and small scars he had accumulated by thirty-one.
There should have been a pale mark near his thumb from slicing it while cooking in university.
It was gone.
He turned his hand over.
The palm was smooth.
Not completely unmarked, but wrong.
Too new.
Min-jae's breathing quickened.
Perhaps heaven did restore people.
Perhaps whatever came after death removed damage, age and imperfection.
The thought returned more insistently now.
He did not want it.
He wanted surgery.
Memory loss.
An elaborate medical explanation involving experimental treatment and extremely inappropriate room assignments.
Anything else.
He moved closer.
His torso entered the mirror.
The black T-shirt was not merely oversized. The body beneath it was smaller than the one it had been designed to cover. Slim shoulders. A narrow chest. A waist untouched by years of company dinners, convenience-store lunches and promises to return to regular exercise next month.
Min-jae looked down at himself.
The sight matched the reflection.
His hands began trembling.
He lifted one to his jaw without yet raising his eyes fully toward the mirror.
No stubble.
He always had stubble in the morning, even after shaving the previous evening.
His fingertips traced smooth skin.
A narrower jaw.
Softer cheeks.
He touched his chin, throat and nose as though his face could be identified piece by piece before he faced it all at once.
His hair fell across his forehead.
Thicker than it had been the day before.
Longer at the front.
Styled loosely by sleep rather than thinning slightly at the temples as he had begun privately fearing it would.
Min-jae closed his eyes.
The darkness behind his eyelids offered no answer.
When he opened them, he looked directly into the mirror.
A teenage boy stared back.
Min-jae stopped breathing.
The boy was pale from fear. His eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted. Dark hair hung untidily over his forehead. The shirt swallowed his slimmer frame, making him look as though he had borrowed sleepwear from an older brother.
He was young.
Not twenty-five.
Not a healthier version of thirty-one.
Young.
Sixteen, perhaps.
Seventeen at the most.
Min-jae knew the face.
He had seen it in old school photographs his mother refused to throw away. It had appeared in grainy audition recordings filmed inside dance academies and company practice rooms. There had once been profile photographs of that face stored inside a folder on his parents' computer, taken during the months when Min-jae believed he was going to debut.
The cheeks had been slightly fuller then.
The eyes brighter.
The jaw not yet completely settled into adulthood.
It was him.
Kang Min-jae at approximately sixteen years old.
The age when he still practised until midnight and woke early enough to study before school.
The age when rejection hurt but had not yet taught him to expect it.
The age when he could still answer every difficult question with certainty.
Do you really want it that much?
Yes.
Min-jae raised his hand.
The boy raised his.
He pressed two fingers against his cheek.
The reflection copied him.
Smooth skin yielded beneath his touch.
He pulled at the hair near his forehead.
The same strands moved in the mirror.
He turned his head left.
Right.
Looked down.
Looked back up.
The boy remained.
"This isn't…"
His voice failed.
The younger voice coming from the younger face destroyed whatever remained of his denial.
People did not become sixteen after traffic accidents.
Surgeons did not remove fifteen years.
Medication did not rebuild a body from adolescence.
No wealthy rescuer could place him inside a room, dress him in unfamiliar clothes and erase every sign that Kang Min-jae had lived beyond high school.
The nightmare had not been a nightmare.
Min-jae's legs weakened.
He reached for the wardrobe, but his hand struck the mirror instead. His palm flattened against cold glass.
The teenage boy did the same from the other side.
"No."
The word came out quietly.
His knees gave way.
Min-jae slid down the mirror until he reached the floor.
The carpet softened the impact.
He sat with his back against the wardrobe, one leg folded awkwardly beneath him, and stared at the hands resting in his lap.
Sixteen-year-old hands.
The truck had killed him.
The conclusion did not arrive dramatically. No thunder sounded. No heavenly voice confirmed it.
It simply became the only explanation left.
The ambulance had not reached him in time.
The people shouting on the road had watched him die.
Somewhere in Seoul, his body had remained beneath the truck while emergency crews worked around it.
Perhaps his mother had already received the call.
Min-jae's breath caught.
He saw her again, not as an imagined figure inside the fading moments of the accident, but clearly.
Her phone ringing.
Her answering with mild annoyance because unknown numbers often meant sales calls.
Someone asking whether she was the mother of Kang Min-jae.
His father noticing her expression from across the room.
No.
Min-jae bent forward, gripping his hair with both hands.
"I'm sorry."
His voice broke.
They would have to travel to a hospital.
They would see what remained of him.
His mother would ask whether he suffered.
His father would handle the practical things because that was what he did whenever everyone else became emotional. Police. Insurance. Funeral arrangements. Calls to relatives.
Min-jae had spoken to them yesterday.
He had lied.
Seo-ah was busy.
Work was fine.
He would visit soon.
Soon.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The word had followed him even into death.
His parents would never know he had finally understood.
They would never hear him admit that he had taken them for granted. He would never sit through another dinner while his mother filled his plate despite his protests. He would never watch his father disguise concern as criticism.
He had thought he had another chance.
For several beautiful minutes, he had believed the truck was only a warning.
He had promised to change.
Now the promise had nowhere to go.
Seo-ah.
Min-jae's head lifted.
The boy inside the mirror looked back at him with tears gathering in his eyes.
What would happen to her?
The police might call because her number appeared frequently in his recent contacts. Perhaps his parents would contact her. Perhaps she would hear from one of their mutual friends.
Only four days after the breakup.
She would remember their final conversation.
She would remember telling him she could not continue living beside someone who treated their future as an abstract possibility.
Then she would learn that he had died.
Min-jae knew her.
She would blame herself even when everyone told her not to.
She would wonder whether he had been distracted because of her. Whether he had been drinking. Whether he had gone outside because the apartment felt empty after she left.
All of those things had been partly true.
None of them made the accident her fault.
But guilt did not obey fairness.
Min-jae leaned his head back against the mirror.
"She was right."
The confession disappeared into the room.
"I was going to tell her."
He had finally decided.
He had imagined rings, parents, apartments and a real timeline. For once, the decisions had not frightened him. The dream had burned through every excuse and left only what mattered.
He loved her.
He wanted to marry her.
He wanted to choose her deliberately rather than assuming she would remain available until he became ready.
He had been ready.
Too late.
Tears ran down the younger face in the mirror.
Min-jae looked away from it.
His apartment would be empty now.
The yellow mug beside the sink.
Seo-ah's raspberry tea.
The photograph from Busan.
His work laptop on the table.
Laundry he had not folded.
A refrigerator containing eggs, beer and a plastic container old enough to threaten public health.
All of it would remain exactly where he had left it.
Until someone entered.
His parents, perhaps.
The landlord.
Police.
His mother would see the mug and know it belonged to Seo-ah. She would understand that something had happened between them before Min-jae found the courage to explain.
His coworkers would hear on Monday morning.
Sang-ho would remember the message about the meeting.
Got it. Thanks.
Thumbs-up emoji.
Min-jae almost laughed.
The sound became a sob instead.
His director would redistribute the revised Q3 numbers. Someone else would take his projects. His desk would be cleared. The mug he kept at work might end up inside a cardboard box alongside chargers, pens and the emergency tie he stored in a drawer.
His life would be reduced to belongings requiring decisions.
Keep.
Return.
Throw away.
The beautiful room surrounding him seemed suddenly obscene.
The television.
The consoles.
The computer.
The clothes.
Everything he had once wanted.
What good was any of it?
What was heaven supposed to be if it began by proving that everything he loved remained somewhere he could no longer reach?
Min-jae wiped his face with the heel of his hand.
He tried to think.
Perhaps this truly was heaven.
Not the clouds and gates of childhood illustrations, but a place shaped by desire.
Maybe the dead were restored to youth.
People often spoke of loved ones appearing healthy in dreams after death. Grandparents no longer frail. Parents free of illness. Children grown or preserved at the age they were remembered most strongly.
Perhaps everyone arrived as the version of themselves they had wanted to keep.
Sixteen.
Why sixteen?
Min-jae looked at the reflection again.
That was not his physical peak. He had been stronger after military service, healthier in his mid-twenties and more conventionally attractive after learning how to dress like an adult.
But sixteen had been the age of belief.
The age before the provisional debut team, before being removed, before every rejection began to feel inevitable.
At sixteen, he had wanted something without apologising for it.
Perhaps heaven restored more than the body.
Perhaps it returned people to the point when they had felt most alive.
The room supported the theory in a twisted way.
A teenage body.
A teenager's ideal bedroom.
Everything his younger self would have interpreted as proof that he had succeeded.
The small refrigerator.
The gaming setup.
The wardrobe.
The music equipment.
The space.
Perhaps someone—or something—had constructed paradise from pieces of his own desires.
It had misunderstood him completely.
"I don't want this."
Min-jae's voice shook.
He looked at the expensive consoles.
"I want my mum."
The words sounded childish in the younger voice.
That made them hurt more.
He wanted his father.
He wanted Seo-ah.
He wanted the ordinary apartment he had resented two hours before death.
He wanted Monday's meeting.
He wanted traffic, bills, company dinners and the upstairs neighbour dragging furniture across the floor.
He wanted the life he had mistaken for emptiness.
Could the dead contact the living?
He searched his memory for every religious claim he had ever heard.
Prayer.
Dreams.
Signs.
Nothing practical.
Could his parents hear him if he spoke?
Did time pass normally here?
Would he remain in this room while they aged?
Would he have to wait thirty years for his father? Forty for his mother? Longer?
The thought was terrible.
The opposite was worse.
What if they went somewhere else when they died?
What if heaven was not shared?
What if every person received a private paradise constructed from their own mind and never saw anyone again?
What if Seo-ah lived another sixty years, married someone else, had children and arrived somewhere that contained the people most important to her?
Would Min-jae even be among them after the way their relationship ended?
His breathing shortened.
He pressed one hand against his chest.
The heartbeat beneath it raced far too quickly.
Heaven should not have panic attacks.
That thought appeared dryly, almost in his usual voice.
It offered no comfort.
Perhaps this was not heaven.
Perhaps it was some waiting place.
A punishment.
A hallucination in the final second before his brain died.
Maybe no time had passed at all. Perhaps the entire room existed between one failing heartbeat and the next, allowing him to understand everything he had lost before consciousness vanished permanently.
Min-jae looked toward the door.
He could leave.
Search for someone.
Demand an explanation.
But the room beyond that door frightened him more than the room itself.
If this was heaven, what would the hallway contain?
If it was a dream, what might wake him?
If it was something worse, did he want to see it?
His hands trembled harder.
He tried to close them into fists.
The fingers refused to remain still.
His breath came shallowly now, too fast to satisfy his lungs.
Min-jae recognised what was happening.
He had experienced something similar once after being removed from the debut lineup, though not this severe. A trainer had found him sitting inside a stairwell, unable to breathe despite knowing there was nothing physically wrong with him.
Slow down.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Count.
Min-jae attempted it.
One.
His breath broke before he reached two.
The room narrowed around him.
The mirror seemed too bright.
The ceiling too high.
He looked down at the teenage hands in his lap and no longer understood how they could belong to him.
Those hands had not held Seo-ah's.
They had not signed his employment contract.
They had not saluted at military discharge, carried boxes into his apartment or placed his first proper bonus inside an envelope for his parents.
Fifteen years of life had vanished from his skin.
Perhaps from the universe.
Min-jae planted one hand against the floor.
He needed to stand.
He needed air.
The curtains.
Open the curtains.
See outside.
Perhaps the view would tell him where dead people went.
He pushed himself upward.
His arm shook beneath his weight.
The room tilted.
He reached toward the edge of the bed, but it appeared much farther away than it should have been.
His fingertips missed.
Min-jae's legs failed beneath him.
The side of his shoulder struck the carpet first, followed by the rest of his body.
His head narrowly missed the bedside table, but the impact still produced a heavy thud that travelled through the floor.
For a moment, Min-jae remained conscious.
He lay curled on his side, staring at the lower edge of the enormous bed.
The expensive rug pressed against his cheek.
His vision pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
Somewhere below him, beyond the closed bedroom door, something moved.
A faint voice carried upward.
"What was that?"
Adult.
Female.
Min-jae's eyes shifted toward the door.
The voice was distant enough that he could not tell whether he recognised it.
He tried to answer.
His lips moved.
No sound emerged.
A pause followed.
Then the woman called again, louder.
"Are you all right?"
Concern had entered her voice.
Min-jae attempted to push himself up.
His arm collapsed.
The room darkened at its edges.
He heard movement downstairs. Something set down quickly. A chair scraping or a cabinet closing.
"Can you hear me?"
The woman was closer now.
Min-jae wanted to call out.
Heaven was not empty.
Someone was here.
Perhaps she could explain.
Perhaps—
His vision disappeared.
Quick footsteps crossed the floor below.
A door opened.
Then came the unmistakable rhythm of someone climbing stairs in a hurry.
The woman called again, but Min-jae was already gone.