Areum's POV
The city I chose was quieter than Seoul.
No flashing headlines tracking my every breath.
No whispers curling behind coffee cups.
No ghosts waiting for me on rooftops.
Just streets that smelled of rain and stone, a language I didn't understand, and a silence soft enough to live inside.
I walked those cobblestone streets with my coat pulled tight, each footstep echoing the choice I made. Leaving wasn't courage. It wasn't even clarity.
It was surrender, the kind that arrives when you finally accept that staying would destroy you both.
When I rented the small apartment above the bookstore, the old man handed me the keys and said, "Welcome to your new chapter."
I nodded.
I didn't tell him I wasn't starting a new story.
I was escaping the last one.
The apartment was small, one window, a shaky radiator, shelves that sagged under the weight of neglected books. But it was the first place in years where the walls didn't echo with someone else's tragedies.
Each morning, I made tea and reread Ji-woo's final message.
Not because I didn't know it by heart,
but because I needed to remember the exact moment innocence died, hers, mine, and Joon-ha's.
Sometimes I wondered if I left for him or for myself.
But I knew the truth:
I left because the version of me that loved him was bleeding out. I stayed too long in a story where I kept trying to fix what was already broken. I kept trying to glue together a boy who didn't know how to stop shattering for the people he loved.
So I ran.
Not from him.
From the woman I became beside him, the woman who kept holding on even when her hands had turned to ash.
I teach part-time at a local art school now.
The students call me Ms. Seo.
Quiet. Soft-spoken. Sharp when necessary.
They don't know anything about Kang Industries,
or Ji-woo,
or memory suppression,
or how many truths I buried under my ribs.
They just know I correct their lines gently.
That I talk about light like it's a living thing.
That I smile, faintly, when they draw hands reaching for something they can't name.
Sometimes, in the middle of a lesson, I catch myself sketching the curve of his jaw in the margins of my notebook.
Not because I want him back.
But because remembering him does not hurt as much as forgetting would.
He was the boy who tried to hold on.
And I was the girl who learned that letting go is also a form of love.
I still keep the white camellia he left behind that night, pressed between the pages of my sketchbook. The petals have browned at the edges, but beauty doesn't die when it withers.
Sometimes, beauty becomes memory.
And memory becomes a map.
Joon Ha's POV
South Korea didn't change after everything.
But I did.
I moved out of the penthouse.
Into a small studio overlooking the Han River, a place with creaking floors and no history attached to my father's empire or my mother's grief.
I didn't return to Kang Industries.
Didn't touch the inheritance.
Didn't answer the board's calls.
People kept asking who I was without the Kang name.
I didn't know.
But for once, not knowing felt like freedom.
Most days, I sit by the river with my sketchbook open.
No clients.
No deadlines.
No expectations.
Just me, pencil, paper, and a silence I am slowly learning to trust.
I draw rooftops.
Hands reaching.
A girl leaving through an airport gate I arrived at too late.
Grief has a strange aftertaste, it lingers long after the tears dry.
Sometimes I still reach for my phone, expecting her message to undo itself.
Expecting her name to blink on the screen, telling me she made a mistake, that she wants to come back.
But I know better.
We were a love built on fractures.
A tender disaster.
A quiet war neither of us could keep winning.
I visit Ji-woo's grave once a week.
Sometimes I bring flowers.
Sometimes silence.
Sometimes both.
But always, guilt.
The kind that settles in your bones.
The kind that whispers, "You could have saved her," even when the world insists you couldn't.
I talk to her like she's still listening.
I tell her about the river.
About the way the light hits the water at sunset.
About my mother, who now sits by the window each afternoon, her hands trembling, her eyes glassy with years she wishes she could rewrite.
I cook for her.
Read to her.
Stay beside her until she falls asleep.
Loyalty doesn't end at betrayal.
It just grows quieter.
I didn't hear from Areum directly.
Not a message.
Not a call.
Not a letter.
But one day, while flipping through a small gallery catalog, I saw her name.
H, Areum "The Boy Who Held On."
My breath caught.
The sketch wasn't labeled as me.
But I knew.
In the shadows.
In the posture.
In the tenderness she never gave herself permission to speak aloud.
I didn't cry.
I just closed the book.
Because some love stories don't need resurrection.
Just remembrance.
Areum's POV
Some nights, I stand by the sea with my sketchbook in hand, the wind slapping hair across my face, the cold stinging my fingers.
I draw the waves.
Ever-moving.
Ever-breaking.
Ever-returning.
And I think of us.
How we spent so long trying to hold water in our hands.
How we mistook drowning for devotion.
Healing is not loud.
It is not cinematic.
It is not the dramatic aftermath of a leaving.
Healing is waking up one morning
and realizing you survived a memory.
Joon Ha's POv
I walk by the river at night now.
Watching the city glow like a heartbeat stitched across the horizon.
And I think of her.
Not with longing, but with gratitude.
She left softly.
That is a rare kind of mercy.
Whenever the wind brushes against my cheek, I pretend it's her passing through the places we once stood together, the places where we almost became something we weren't ready to be.
There are moments brief, breath-sized, when I almost feel her beside me.
Not haunting.
Just existing.
As if love doesn't disappear.
It simply changes shape.
Areum's POV
I stand by the sea, sketchbook open, letting the wind turn the pages for me. Somewhere in this world, he is looking at a river that reflects the same moon.
The distance doesn't frighten me anymore.
Because healing taught me this:
Love doesn't fail when two people walk in different directions.
It fails when they forget why they ever held hands in the first place.
And I haven't forgotten.
Not him.
Not us.
Not the quiet bravery of walking away.
Joon Ha's POV
I sit by the Han River, drawing the curve of a shoreline I've never seen but feel in my bones.
Maybe it's hers.
Maybe it's mine.
Maybe it's both.
The city hums beneath me.
The water glows.
And somewhere, across oceans, I imagine her doing the same, sitting alone, sketchbook open, heart steady.
We are no longer a love story.
We are something quieter.
Stronger.
More permanent.
We are the memory of two people who tried.
Who failed gently.
Who survived beautifully.
And in that, we still hold on.
Chapter 40 / 47
Note: My new novel "velvet devotion" is coming out on 17th November 2025
It's not the book 2 of this novel but it includes some characters from this novel which are, Kim Ara and Detective Choi.