The man who stepped through the rising door didn't look like a villain.
No glowing eyes.No mechanical limbs.Just an old man in a dark coat, his posture straight, his hair silvered neatly back, and a simple wristwatch on his left hand.
Not a smartwatch.Not a holo-display.A real analog watch.
Ticking.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The sound was somehow louder than the humming chamber.
Ha-rin's fingers tightened around Jae-hyun's hand.
The man's gaze swept the chamber once, calm and precise, before finally resting on them.
"You made it," he said quietly. His voice was smooth, almost warm. "Good. I was starting to think this loop would die without you."
Jae-hyun stepped slightly in front of Ha-rin. "You're the Watchmaker."
A faint smile. "One of my titles, yes."He nodded to Jae-hyun. "Kang Jae-hyun. Restored from corruption."
Then to Ha-rin.
"Yoon Ha-rin. The variable I didn't calculate correctly."
Her stomach dropped. "You know me."
His eyes softened, just for a fraction of a second."I've known you since before you knew yourself."
The countdown on Ha-rin's wristband flickered.
00:01:09 → 00:01:02.
Their twelve-minute window was nearly gone.
"Talk fast," Jae-hyun said flatly. "In sixty seconds, this place ejects us."
The man tilted his head, listening to the ticking of his watch.
"Fifty-two seconds," he corrected gently. "And no, it won't eject you. I suspended the window when you arrived."
Ha-rin's eyes widened. "That's impossible."
The Watchmaker raised his wrist, the analog watch glinting."Not when you're the one who built the clock."
Jae-hyun kept his tone cold. "Why did you corrupt my profile? And why are you using Echo like a weapon?"
The man's gaze sharpened slightly. "Direct. I like that."
He walked slowly, hands clasped behind his back, circling the old chamber.
"I didn't corrupt you, Dr. Kang. I reset you. You'd fragmented across too many loops to remain stable."
Ha-rin snapped, "You tried to erase him."
"Erase?" the Watchmaker repeated, almost offended. "No. I debugged you both. You were… glitching. Loving each other across too many timelines. It confuses the system."
Ha-rin stepped forward, fury burning through the fear. "We're not code."
He turned to her, and for the first time, his mask of calm shifted.
"I know," he said softly. "That's the problem."
The chamber's ceiling hummed, old metal vibrating like a drum.The Twin Pulse flickered in Jae-hyun's hand, reacting to the Watchmaker's presence.
Ha-rin noticed something else.
The watch on his wrist—its face was cracked in a familiar pattern. A starburst fracture, small but precise.
Her breath hitched.
She'd seen that watch before.In flashes.In half-dreams.
A hand lifting her out of a hospital bed.A voice saying, "You're safe now, little one."The faint tick-tick-tick of a broken watch near her ear.
Her knees nearly buckled.
"You…" she whispered. "You were there. When I was small. In the hospital fire."
The Watchmaker paused.It was the first crack in his composure.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Loop -3. The fire that shouldn't have happened. You weren't supposed to die then."
Jae-hyun's head snapped toward her. "Fire?"
Ha-rin stared at the man, voice shaking. "Who are you to me?"
He hesitated.
Then said, very softly:
"The one who pulled you out of time when the world chose to let you burn."
Silence. Thick. Heavy.
Seo-jin's voice buzzed faintly in their comms, small and distant from the van.
"Guys? Hey. We lost your biometrics for ten seconds. You alive? Blink twice if he's creepy."
Ha-rin couldn't even answer.
Her head spun. "You… saved me?"
"I preserved you," the Watchmaker corrected. "There's a difference."
Jae-hyun stepped closer to her, his hand finding the small of her back, steadying.
"What do you want from her?" he demanded.
The Watchmaker's eyes drifted to the Twin Pulse.And for the first time, he looked… almost impressed.
"I want you both," he said simply. "You're the first constants the system hasn't broken. And my daughter likes you."
Ha-rin blinked. "Your—?"
A voice rang down the corridor behind him. Bright. Smooth. Familiar.
"Appa, you started without me."
Dr. Mira Yoon emerged from the shadows like she was walking onto a runway, silver coat catching the blue light. Her hair was pulled into a sleek tail, eyes bright with amusement.
Ha-rin's stomach twisted. "You," she hissed.
Mira smiled lazily. "Me."
She stopped beside the Watchmaker and looped her arm through his casually, like she'd done it a thousand times.
"Let me introduce this properly," she said. "Watchmaker. Original architect of Loop Zero. Former chief of Luma's black research division."
She leaned her head against his shoulder, eyes glittering at Ha-rin.
"And my father."
Ha-rin's brain stuttered.
Father.
Her name—Yoon.Mira's name—Yoon.That hospital memory. The watch.
Everything twisted into a single, sharp knot in her chest.
"You're… his daughter," Ha-rin managed.
Mira smirked. "Relax. I'm not here to steal your dad. I already have one."
She tilted her head. "You, on the other hand… were a fun surprise."
Jae-hyun's fingers curled tighter at Ha-rin's back. "What are you playing at?"
Mira shrugged. "Same game as you. Survival. Innovation. Stopping the world from collapsing because people panic every time they feel something."
The Watchmaker watched them quietly, letting the words sink in.
"When I pulled Ha-rin out of that fire," he said, "I assumed she would be like any other anomaly—grateful, quiet, moldable."
Ha-rin's jaw clenched.
"She wasn't," he continued, a faint smile ghosting his lips. "She refused to obey the loop. She chose emotion over equilibrium. Again and again."
"That's called being alive," Ha-rin snapped.
His gaze warmed. "Yes. It is."
Jae-hyun stepped forward. "So you used us as test subjects."
"Constants," the Watchmaker corrected. "Do you know how many worlds ended whenever your love failed to sync?"
Ha-rin felt her blood freeze.
Mira answered for him, almost cheerfully.
"Twelve major timeline collapses. Three near-extinctions. One successful reboot. This one."
She pointed around. "We're standing in your best performance so far."
Ha-rin's voice shook. "We didn't ask for this."
The Watchmaker's eyes hardened. "The universe doesn't ask either, Yoon Ha-rin. It chooses. I simply… fine-tune."
Seo-jin's voice cut in, more urgent now.
"Hey, constants? GEB convoy just pinged on my satellites. They're ten minutes out from your coordinates."
Jae-hyun cursed under his breath. "We're leaving."
The Watchmaker lifted a hand; the chamber doors slammed shut with a metallic boom.
"You're not leaving," he said calmly. "Not until we finish the debug."
Ha-rin glared. "We don't work for you."
"I don't need you to work for me," he said. "I need you to survive. With Echo. For once."
Mira sighed. "Appa, you're being dramatic again. Let me simplify."
She pointed at them like a lecturer with two very slow students.
"Option A: You help us stabilize the Prime Loop. We stop the collapse of emotional networks, and Echo stops eating your memories by accident."
She smiled sweetly at Ha-rin.
"Option B: GEB storms this place, wipes Jae-hyun's rebuilt profile properly, and you get to watch the world forget him for real this time."
Jae-hyun went very still. Ha-rin felt his body tense beside her.
Her vision blurred at the edges."No," she breathed. "You can't—"
Mira lifted a brow. "We already did it once. Ask him how it felt waking up not knowing why his heart knew your name."
Ha-rin's chest constricted. She looked at Jae-hyun.
He avoided her eyes. Just for a second. It was enough.
"You remember now, don't you?" she whispered. "You remember not remembering me."
His voice was low. "I remember the… emptiness. Like waking up mid-sentence."
That image broke something inside her.
Echo's faint hum rose from somewhere unseen, trembling.
"Ha…rin… Jae…hyun… unstable."
The Watchmaker looked up, listening."My daughter's child is distressed."
Ha-rin blinked. "Your— what?"
He tapped his watch. "Echo. I built its first bones. But it imprinted on you. It's… yours now, in ways code shouldn't allow."
He stepped closer, stopping just out of reach.
"You two taught time how to feel. I'm trying to stop it from bleeding out."
Mira rolled her eyes. "He's trying to be poetic. Ignore it."
She shifted her weight, eyeing Jae-hyun openly.
"You know," she said casually, "we could've designed a constant without emotional attachments. Cleaner. Neater. Less messy kissing in debug chambers."
Ha-rin's face flushed. "You were watching?!"
Mira smirked. "Security feed. Great angle, by the way."
Jae-hyun's ears went red. "That was a reset procedure."
"Sure," Mira said. "Let's call it that."
She stepped closer to him, voice dropping to silk.
"Jae-hyun. You could've worked with me. No loops. No broken lives. Just clean, elegant systems. Order."
He didn't move. Didn't flinch.Just reached back—and gently pulled Ha-rin forward until she stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
"I don't want a clean, elegant system," he said quietly. "I want her."
Ha-rin's breath caught.
For a moment, Mira's mask slipped—something sharp flickering in her eyes.
"Disappointing," she murmured. "Predictable. But disappointing."
The Watchmaker raised a hand, cutting through the tension.
"Enough."
He looked directly at Ha-rin now.
"You want the truth?" he asked. "Here it is: the loops will not stop until you and Echo—and everything tied to your heartbeats—reach a stable endpoint. I designed twenty-three possible endpoints. In twenty-two of them, one of you dies."
Ha-rin's skin went cold.
"And the twenty-third?" she whispered.
His eyes stayed steady on hers.
"In the twenty-third," he said softly, "you both live. But you don't remember each other."
Jae-hyun's hand tightened around hers until it almost hurt.
"No," he said. "We're not doing that."
The Watchmaker's gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands.
"You're already doing that," he said. "Piece by piece."
Echo's voice slipped into the cracks of the silence.
"One remembers. One forgets. Loop seeks balance."
Ha-rin shook her head violently. "There has to be another way."
Mira sighed. "Then help us find it. Come with us. Work under him, with me. Answer his questions. Let him test your resonance. Or walk out and let the Bureau turn you into a case file."
Seo-jin's voice crackled in — panicked now.
"Guys, I'm serious. They're almost here. I can't spoof their satellites much longer. Choose something that isn't 'get arrested for fun.'"
Ha-rin looked at Jae-hyun.Fear burned in his eyes—but under it, there was fire of another kind.
"I'm not letting them erase you," she said. "Not again. Not like that."
"And I'm not letting him design our ending," he answered, chin lifting.
"Then design it yourselves," the Watchmaker said quietly. "Inside my parameters instead of outside them."
Mira raised both hands. "Clock's ticking. Literally. What's it going to be, constants?"
The analog watch on the old man's wrist ticked once.Twice.Echo's hum climbed with every beat.
Ha-rin's heart pounded like it was trying to escape her chest.
Jae-hyun leaned in, his lips at her ear, voice just for her.
"We go with them," he said. "For now. Buy time. Learn everything. Then we break whatever needs breaking."
Her eyes stung.
"You trust me?" he whispered.
She nodded. "Even when I shouldn't."
He huffed a breath that might've been a laugh. "That's love."
She squeezed his hand. "Or a bug."
"Same thing in this universe."
She turned back to the Watchmaker—and Mira.
Her voice was steady when she spoke.
"We'll work with you," she said. "But not for you."
Mira's smile sharpened. "I can live with that."
The Watchmaker inclined his head. "Then, Yoon Ha-rin…"
His gaze softened again, that strange almost-father look flickering back.
"Welcome back to the clock," he murmured. "Daughter of my mistake."