The next morning smelled like burnt espresso and overworked ambition — a typical day at Luma Group.
Yoon Ha-rin stood at the coffee machine, watching it groan its way through yet another double shot.She had survived the storm, the lab, and the unending weirdness of time doing yoga around her life.Surely she could handle caffeine.
Behind her, someone said, "You're glaring at that machine like it owes you a raise."
She didn't turn. "I'm manifesting gratitude energy."
Kang Jae-hyun's reflection appeared beside hers in the chrome panel. "It looks terrified."
"Good," she muttered. "Maybe it'll stop spilling coffee all over the universe."
He reached past her to grab a mug, close enough that she could smell cedar and rain on his shirt."Still hearing it?" he asked quietly.
She nodded. "At night. Sometimes in my dreams. Sometimes…"She hesitated. "Sometimes in the silence between words."
He met her eyes, something unreadable flickering behind his calm. "Then we stay alert. No one else needs to know yet."
The machine sputtered.Then, without warning, it boiled over.
Coffee gushed, steam hissed, and a dozen coworkers jumped back.
"Ha-rin!" Na-eun yelped, snatching napkins.
But before a single drop hit the counter—the world stopped.
Steam froze mid-air.The brown spill hung in a glittering curve like a photograph suspended in water.
Na-eun stood still, eyes half-blinking.Even the clock's second hand hung at 9:42.
Only Ha-rin and Jae-hyun moved.
She whispered, "Jae-hyun…"
He stared around them, heartbeat pounding in his ears. "Twelve seconds?"
She checked her phone. The screen refused to change.
"Not twelve minutes this time," she said. "Twelve heartbeats."
He exhaled a shaky laugh. "Short-form time travel. The universe is adapting."
They stepped through the frozen scene, the soft echo of their shoes impossibly loud.
Ha-rin waved a hand in front of Na-eun's face. "She's blinking mid-eye. That's talent."
Jae-hyun smirked. "Freeze-frame acting. HR should give bonuses."
"Don't joke," Ha-rin whispered, suddenly uneasy. "What if they don't… unfreeze?"
"Then we'll be the only two people in the timeline," he said, trying to sound calm. "Some would call that paradise."
She gave him a look. "You'd get bored in five minutes."
"True," he said. "Six, if you keep talking."
She almost laughed, then stopped. "Listen."
Beneath the stillness, there was that faint sound again — tick… tick… tick — like a hidden metronome keeping score.
They followed it toward the hallway.
At the end of the corridor, on the wall near the fire exit, the office clock had changed.
Instead of numbers, it showed faint glowing marks — twelve dots in a circle.And between them, two faint letters: H & J.
Ha-rin swallowed. "We're inside it now."
He looked at her. "Inside what?"
"The loop," she said. "It's not following us anymore. It's around us."
The world jolted back into motion.
Steam fell, coffee splashed, Na-eun shrieked, "Why does this always happen near you?"
Ha-rin blinked hard, heart racing. Everything was normal again.
Almost.
On the counter beside the mug sat a folded napkin — blank, except for a smudge of silver ink that hadn't been there before.
She opened it.Two words in looping handwriting:
Don't spill the eleventh cup.
Her skin prickled. "Jae-hyun," she whispered, showing him.
He stared, then whispered back, "How many coffees has this machine made today?"
She checked the counter — ten empty cups.
They both looked at the next one filling, inch by inch.
At exactly 9:54, the machine stopped itself.
Eleven cups complete.
The office clock struck 12:12.
"Okay," Jae-hyun said softly. "I'm officially done pretending this is coincidence."
Ha-rin nodded, gripping her napkin. "It's warning us."
He looked at her — really looked, as if memorizing her in this flickering reality."If time wants to talk," he said, "then we listen. But not here. Lunch, rooftop. You, me, and whatever version of gravity this day obeys."
She smiled, nerves trembling into warmth. "You planning to flirt with physics?"
"Only if it looks like you," he said.
Na-eun groaned from the doorway. "If you're done breaking appliances and metaphors, some of us would like coffee that doesn't pause the world."
Ha-rin bit back a laugh. "Sorry, universal maintenance break."
That afternoon, the company intranet posted a notice:
SYSTEM UPDATE: "Echo Synchronization Error Detected."
Only two people saw the timestamp —12:12.
And only they heard the faint, deliberate tick that followed, as if time itself were smiling.