The nightmare returned.
But this time, it didn't end in blood.
Joon-ha stood on the rooftop again, the wind slicing through his coat, the city far below flickering like a dying constellation, lights blinking in and out as if the world couldn't decide whether it wanted to remember him or erase him.
Ji-woo was there, just as before.
Standing at the edge.
Hair ghost-tangled in the wind.
Eyes full of something ancient.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Resignation.
In every version of the dream before, the ending was the same:
Joon-ha shoved him.
Or watched him fall.
Or turned away as the body dropped like a star losing its orbit.
But tonight…
Tonight, something shifted.
Tonight, Joon-ha reached out.
"Don't," he whispered, the word bleeding through the storm, fragile and cracking. "Don't let go."
Ji-woo's hand trembled in his.
His fingers were cold, not the cold of winter, but the cold of leaving.
"I can't hold on," Ji-woo said. His voice was distant, echoing, as if it belonged to another world entirely. "It's too heavy."
"You have to," Joon-ha pleaded. His breath shook. "I'm here. I remember. I'm real."
Ji-woo looked at him then, really looked, and for the first time, there was softness.
A sadness shaped like mercy.
"Then remember this," Ji-woo said.
And this time, he didn't fall.
He faded.
Light unraveling into nothing.
A soul slipping back into the edges of memory.
Joon-ha woke with a gasp.
Sweat clung to his skin, hair plastered to his forehead. The room was dark, the kind of dark that feels alive. His sketchbook lay open beside him, the frantic ink smudged where his hand had dragged across the page.
The words stared back at him:
I am real. I am real. I am real.
Tonight, for the first time, he believed it.
Maybe memory wasn't something stolen.
Maybe it was something fought for.
A truth that refused to die.
__________________
A storm meeting another storm.
Areum's apartment was quiet when Ara arrived.
She didn't knock.
She simply stood in the doorway, her coat dripping rainwater onto the hardwood floor. Her eyes were sharp, not with anger, not with kindness, but with a clarity that could cut stone.
Areum looked up from her desk, surprised.
"Ara?"
Ara stepped inside, her heels clicking like punctuation marks that demanded attention.
"I came to talk," Ara said.
Areum nodded and gestured toward the couch. "Sit."
Ara didn't.
She remained standing, arms crossed, posture straight, expression unreadable.
"I support your revenge," Ara said. "Ji-woo deserves justice. We all do."
Areum's breath hitched. "Then why do you look like you're about to scold me?"
Because Ara's eyes had that look, the one people wear when they've loved someone fiercely enough to be disappointed in them.
"You used Joon-ha," Ara said quietly.
The words landed like a blade.
Areum flinched, not visibly, but in the way her fingers curled in on themselves.
Ara continued.
"You knew he was fragile. You knew he was suffering. And you still threw him into the fire."
Areum swallowed hard.
"I thought I had to."
"No," Ara said. "You thought sacrificing him was the fastest route to victory."
Her voice wasn't cruel.
It was the truth spoken through clenched teeth.
"But you don't win wars by destroying the people you love," Ara said. "You win by protecting them."
Areum looked down, her voice breaking. "I didn't know about the Amnex-9. I didn't know he was a victim too."
"It doesn't matter." Ara stepped closer. "Intentions don't erase wounds."
Silence settled between them, heavy, but not hostile.
Then Ara said, softer, almost gentle:
"Love shouldn't be used as a weapon. Not even against monsters."
Areum closed her eyes, nodding slowly. "I won't use him again."
Ara turned toward the door, pausing with her hand on the frame.
"Then love him," she said. "But don't stop fighting."
"I won't," Areum whispered. "Not until Kang pays for everything."
Ara didn't smile.
She just nodded once, like a soldier acknowledging another soldier's vow.
And then she left.
________________
"Sometimes love is cleaning the ruins someone forgot they were living in."
Areum arrived at Joon-ha's penthouse just after sunset.
She let herself in quietly, the kind of quiet reserved for sacred places and broken hearts.
The air felt stale.
Dust clung to the surfaces.
The apartment was a mess: clothes left where they fell, dishes crusted at the sink, curtains half-drawn like the room itself had stopped trying.
The piano, once polished to a mirror shine, sat untouched, a monument to silence.
Areum didn't speak.
She just began cleaning.
Folding blankets.
Stacking papers.
Washing dishes with meticulous hands.
Opening windows to let the world breathe for him when he couldn't breathe for himself.
She lit a sandalwood candle on the counter, the scent warm, grounding, human.
Joon-ha was on the couch, body still, eyes distant, as if he were watching a life he no longer believed belonged to him.
Areum knelt beside him.
She brushed his hair back gently, fingers trembling.
"You're safe," she whispered.
He didn't respond.
His chest rose and fell, shallow, uneven.
She placed a glass of water on the table, then opened her palm to show him a small, white pill.
"It's just a sedative," she said softly. "You need sleep."
He took it without protest not because he trusted the pill, but because he trusted her.
She sat beside him, her hand resting lightly over his.
"I won't use you," she said. "Not ever again. You're not a weapon."
His eyes flickered toward her, tired, hollow, fragile.
"And I will love you," she whispered. "Even if the world hates you. Even if you hate yourself."
His breath stuttered.
His eyes finally closed.
For the first time in days, maybe weeks, he slept.
Areum stayed beside him, her body still, her eyes fixed on the city outside.
Lights flickered.
Sirens wailed somewhere far below.
Life kept moving as if the world hadn't just swallowed a boy whole.
She didn't cry.
She didn't speak.
She just stayed.
Because sometimes, love isn't loud.
It isn't dramatic.
It isn't a declaration shouted under rain.
Sometimes love is the quiet choice to stay when everything else tells you to run.
Later that night, Joon-ha stirred in his sleep.
His lips parted, a whisper escaping, cracked and fragile.
Areum leaned closer, breath held.
"Ji-woo," he murmured. "I didn't let go."
Her heart fractured.
She pressed her hand gently to his chest, feeling the slow, steady rhythm beneath her palm.
"You held on," she whispered. "That's all that matters."
And for the first time, the night didn't feel like an enemy.
It felt like a witness.
A quiet, patient witness to two people learning how to hold each other without breaking.