Areum came every day.
Same time.
Same chair.
Same quiet insistence.
Each morning she sat in that too-bright hospital corridor, hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee she never drank, eyes fixed on the door she wasn't allowed to enter.
And every day she repeated the same question, soft but steady, like a prayer worn thin:
"Can I see him?"
The nurses always hesitated, exchanging glances heavy with sympathy.
Min Joon always apologized, shoulders slightly bowed as though he carried everyone's grief.
And Joon-ha… Joon-ha always said no.
"Not yet. Not like this."
And she never argued.
She didn't scream.
She didn't accuse.
She didn't fall apart in the hallway the way some lovers might.
She only left quietly, her back straight, her steps steady
the kind of steady that breaks the longer you look at it.
But the next day, she always came back.
It was a devotion without fireworks, without theatrics, without dramatic declarations.
The kind of devotion people wouldn't notice until it was gone.
A quiet, aching love.
A love shaped like waiting.
On the seventh day, something shifted.
Rain poured steadily against the hospital windows, blurring the city into shades of gray. The room was dim, the kind of dim where silence felt heavier than light.
Min Joon sat beside Joon-ha's bed, watching him stare at the ceiling like he was searching for an answer written in the cracks.
The IV drip beeped at intervals that felt like a heartbeat too slow.
"Joon-ha," Min Joon finally said, voice soft but anchored.
The older boy didn't look at him.
Min Joon continued anyway.
"She's not here to judge you."
"She's not here to drag you back into something you can't handle."
"She's here because she still loves you."
Joon-ha's jaw clenched, a small motion, but enough.
Min Joon leaned forward.
"illness or mental disorder doesn't make you unlovable."
Joon-ha shut his eyes tightly, as if the words hurt more than they healed.
"It makes things harder," Min Joon admitted, "but it doesn't make you unworthy."
Silence stretched like a fragile thread between them.
Finally, Joon-ha whispered:
"I don't want her to see me like this."
Min Joon's expression softened.
"She already sees you. The real you. The one who wanted to protect her by pushing her away."
Another pause.
Then a crack in the armor:
"What if I break again?"
"Then she'll be here again," Min Joon said. "Not to fix you, but to love you."
A long, trembling breath.
Then
"Okay…"
"Let her in."
Areum stepped inside slowly, as though the room might collapse if she moved too fast.
She hadn't seen him in months.
He looked different.
Thinner, like his body had been burning itself to survive.
Paler, as if sunlight had been replaced by medication.
Eyes sunken, orbiting guilt, fear, and exhaustion.
But he was still Joon-ha.
Still the boy who once held her frozen hands during winter and said, "I'll be your warmth until spring comes."
Still the boy who used to sketch her smile in the margins of his notebooks.
Her throat tightened.
Joon-ha turned at the sound of her footsteps.
Their eyes met, and the entire room shifted, like gravity recognized them.
He whispered first:
"You came…"
She nodded, stepping closer.
"You didn't ask me to. I just did."
Her voice wasn't trembling.
Her hands weren't shaking.
She had already cried all her tears outside this door for six days straight.
She reached for his hand.
He flinched, not from pain, but from memory.
From the thought that he didn't deserve her touch.
But she held his hand anyway.
Warm. Steady.
A quiet rebellion against all the voices in his head telling him she'd be better off without him.
They sat like that for a long time.
No words.
No explanations.
Just the soft hum of the machines and the slow inhale-exhale of two people who used to love each other loudly, now learning how to love quietly.
Finally, he whispered
"I didn't want you to see me like this."
Areum's eyes softened.
"I didn't come to see you," she said gently.
"I came to stay."
His breath hitched.
"I'm not the boy you loved anymore."
Areum leaned closer, brushing a stray hair away from his forehead.
"Boys grow up. They become men. They break. They heal. And sometimes…"
"Sometimes they think they're unworthy when they're the one person someone has been praying for."
His eyes finally filled with tears
not desperation, but release.
"I'm scared, Areum."
She pressed her forehead to his.
"Me too."
"But fear means you still want something."
"And I want you."
A soft, fractured sound escaped him.
Then he whispered the words he'd been holding like a secret ache
"I'm sorry."
Her thumb brushed his cheek.
"Then we'll start again."
"From here. From now. From broken."
Areum had her own scars, the kind that didn't leave marks on the skin.
The nights she waited for his message.
The days she walked past the café where he used to meet her.
The mornings she woke up reaching for someone who wasn't there.
People said loving someone with mental disorder meant becoming their caretaker.
Areum disagreed.
She wasn't carrying him.
She was walking beside him.
And she was carrying something else entirely
Hope.
Stubborn, irrational, inconvenient hope.
The kind that returns every day for seven days straight
and sits outside the door of the boy who broke her heart, not because she's weak, but because she understands him.
Because she remembers him in all his phases
His laughter.
His chaos.
His light.
His shadow.
His music on good days.
His silence on bad days.
She remembers all of him.
And she chose him anyway.
_________________
The rain slowed to a soft drizzle, tapping like a lullaby against the window.
Inside, the silence softened too.
Joon-ha's shoulders finally relaxed.
Areum's fingers laced with his.
Min Joon watched from the doorway, relief settling in his eyes.
No dramatic confessions.
No sudden healing.
No bright miracle.
Just presence.
Two people choosing to breathe in the same room after too many days breathing apart.
Two hearts resting beside each other,
not fixed, not perfect, but trying.
Sometimes healing doesn't shout.
Sometimes it whispers.
And sometimes, it looks like this:
A hand held.
A quiet room.
A returned gaze.
A trembling breath shared between two broken souls learning how to fit together again.
And that, sometimes,
is enough.
More than enough.
Sometimes, it's everything.
Chapter 43/47
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.