The air in the apartment felt different.
Thicker.Heavier.Like something unseen had stepped into the room and decided to stay.
Three heartbeats thudded in sync—Ha-rin's, Jae-hyun's, and the soft, mechanical flutter Echo made inside her chest.
"…threat proximity… unstable…"Echo whispered through her pulse.
Jae-hyun didn't let go of her.
One arm stayed firmly around her waist, the other hand at the back of her head, as if he expected Broken Ha-rin to materialize right there and drag her away.
Ha-rin's fingers curled into his shirt.
"How soon?" she whispered.
Jae-hyun's brows knit. "How soon what?"
"Until she finds us."
He stared at her for a long moment, then said quietly, "Sooner than I'd like."
As if on cue, her phone began to vibrate again.
This time, there was a caller ID.
"Mira," Ha-rin breathed.
Jae-hyun exhaled, loosening his hold just enough for her to reach the coffee table.
"Speaker," he murmured. "No more surprises."
She nodded and answered, putting it on speaker and holding onto Jae-hyun's wrist like an anchor.
"Mira?"
"Finally!" Mira's voice exploded through the apartment. "Why weren't you picking up? Did you die? Did he die? Did both of you die together like idiots—?"
"We're alive," Jae-hyun cut in.
"Debatable," Mira muttered. "You sound dead."
"We had… a visitor," he said.
Ha-rin's eyes flicked toward the machine's slumped form.
"Define 'visitor'," Mira said suspiciously. "Pizza guy? Board member? Time anomaly?"
"Echo fragment inside a mechanical body that tried to kill him," Ha-rin said bluntly.
Silence.
"Mira?" Ha-rin prompted.
More silence.
Then a quiet, very heartfelt:
"What the actual hell."
"It brought Echo's core," Ha-rin added.
"WHAT?!"
Jae-hyun rubbed his temple with his free hand. "Mira, focus."
"I am focusing," she snapped. "I'm focusing on the fact that your 'experiment is over' and yet Echo sent a robot to Ha-rin's apartment like it's Amazon Prime."
Ha-rin almost choked on a laugh despite everything.
"Mira," Jae-hyun said, "did you call just to yell at us, or is there more?"
Her tone shifted.
More serious.Less chaotic.
"There's more," she admitted. "We've detected bursts."
Ha-rin stiffened. "Bursts?"
"Echo-signature time distortions," Mira said. "Short-range, high-frequency, scattered across the city in the last two hours."
Jae-hyun's eyes narrowed. "Coordinates?"
"Near your building," she said. "And the park two blocks away. And—" she hesitated, "—your parents' house, Ha-rin."
Ha-rin went cold.
"My… parents' house?"
"Yes," Mira said grimly. "The readings are messy, like someone pinged multiple locations at once trying to find… something."
"Me," Ha-rin whispered.
The room felt smaller.
Jae-hyun's grip around her waist tightened unconsciously.
"Any visual?" he asked. "Cameras? Satellite?"
"Nothing clear," Mira replied. "Just interference. Like a glitch moving through frames. But…"She exhaled. "Appa thinks it's her."
"Broken Ha-rin," Ha-rin said.
"Yeah."
Her heart pounded painfully.
"And we have one more tiny, fun problem," Mira added.
Jae-hyun's tone was pure warning. "Mira."
"The Board has been alerted about 'unusual residual activity'," she said. "They'll want both of you at the lab. Today. They're pushing for full psych evaluation, direct questioning, and probably locking Ha-rin into some observation room 'for her safety'."
Ha-rin swallowed, nausea creeping in.
"I'm not a lab rat."
"Exactly why I called," Mira snapped. "Do not come in yet."
Jae-hyun frowned. "We can't ignore them."
"For a few hours, you can," Mira argued. "Appa is stalling. He told them you both 'need rest' and that he can't ethically drag you in right after time trauma."
"Ethically," Jae-hyun repeated with a small, humorless huff.
"Take advantage of it," Mira said. "You've got maybe… half a day before they escalate. Use it to move somewhere safer."
Ha-rin's chest tightened.
"Safer than my apartment?" she asked.
Mira's voice softened.
"If Broken-You is pinging places tied to your memories," she said, "this is the worst place to stay. She knows this is where you feel at home."
Ha-rin unconsciously pressed closer to Jae-hyun.
"Where do you suggest we go?" he asked.
There was a pause.
"Appa has a safe node," Mira said. "Old offline facility. No network access. No external feeds. It was used before Echo came online. She shouldn't be able to track you there easily."
Ha-rin bit her lip.
"That sounds like a bunker," she muttered.
"Fancy bunker," Mira corrected. "My taste is involved."
"Send the coordinates," Jae-hyun said.
"I'll send you a ping-only file," she replied. "Unmounted. No constant VPN. You'll have to memorize the route and wipe it."
"Done," he said.
"Jae-hyun."
"Yeah?"
Mira hesitated, then said quietly:
"Don't let either version of her go alone. Please."
They both looked at each other.
"I won't," he said.
"Good," Mira muttered. "I need to be the chaotic aunt in your future, not the tragic one. Call me when you get there. If you survive the Board and Broken-Ha-rin, I'll consider forgiving you for not looping me into your romance earlier."
"Mira—" Ha-rin sputtered.
"BYE," Mira sang, and cut the call.
The line clicked dead.
Silence again.
This time less empty, more charged.
Ha-rin stared at her phone.
Jae-hyun slid his hand from her waist to her wrist, thumb moving slowly in calming circles.
"Hey," he said softly. "Breathe."
She inhaled shakily.
"They might drag me into a lab."
"They won't."
"How do you know?"
His jaw clenched.
"Because I won't let that happen."
Her chest tightened, something like warmth fighting the cold fear.
"You keep saying that," she whispered, "like you can walk into a Board room and bend reality."
He leaned in slightly.
"I don't need to bend reality," he murmured. "Just people."
She huffed a surprised laugh.
Then her eyes flickered to the machine again.
"What about him?"
They both watched the motionless metal body on the floor.
"Right now," Jae-hyun said, "we treat it like unstable evidence. We can't take it with us, but we also can't leave it for someone else to find."
"I can wipe the external logs," Ha-rin offered. "At least make it look like a dead prototype, not Echo's fragment."
"That will draw less attention," he agreed.
She pulled her hand from his grip reluctantly and knelt beside the machine, her fingers hovering above its chest panel.
Echo pulsed nervously inside her.
"…careful… residual memory may trigger…"
She murmured back in her mind, I know.
Gently, she brushed her fingers along the panel.
No reaction.
She exhaled and opened the override panel near its neck, fingers moving with sure habit from years of system work with Mira.
For a few tense seconds, the only sound was her typing, the soft click of keys, and Jae-hyun's barely audible footsteps as he paced behind her, unwilling to leave her unshielded for even a moment.
"Logs corrupted," she murmured. "Trace route obfuscated. Memory core removed. Functionally just… a weird damaged robot now."
"Perfect," he said. "That's all I want it to be if anyone finds it."
She closed the panel.
Then hesitated.
Her hand lingered on its shoulder.
"Thank you," she whispered to it. "For bringing him back."
Jae-hyun watched her, something unreadable in his eyes.
"Ha-rin."
She stood and turned to him.
He stepped closer.
Too close.
Her back bumped the wall; she hadn't realized she'd backed up.
He braced one hand on the wall beside her head without trapping her, close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him, smell the faint hint of his cologne.
"Pack," he said softly.
Her brain short-circuited at the proximity.
"Pack…?"
"For a few days." His eyes didn't leave hers. "Clothes. Essentials. Anything you'd miss if this place vanished."
She stared at him.
"You… think she'll really come here?"
He didn't lie.
"Yes."
Her heart stuttered.
He lifted his other hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, fingers brushing her skin deliberately, slowly, like he was memorizing the texture.
"You won't be here when she does," he added. "That's the important part."
Her breath caught.
"Are you… staying with me? In that safe node?"
His mouth curved, not quite a smile.
"Try getting rid of me," he murmured.
Her cheeks burned.
"You're very full of yourself."
"Only about one thing."
"What?"
"You."
She was absolutely not ready for that answer.
Her heart slammed against her ribs hard enough that Echo did a startled little glitch.
"…emotional spike… very high… constant…"
Shut up, she told him silently.
Jae-hyun's gaze dipped very briefly—to her lips—then flicked back up.
"We don't have much time," he said softly. "But I'm not rushing you. Pack first."
She nodded quickly, desperate for an excuse to escape his gravity for ten seconds.
"Right. Yes. Packing. Packing is good. Packing is normal."
She fled to the bedroom.
He watched her go, eyes dark, that half-smile lingering like a secret.
The Suitcase
She threw a duffel bag on the bed and opened her wardrobe.
"This feels unreal," she muttered, grabbing shirts, hoodies, jeans. "Running away, again. Like the loops never really ended."
"…loops ended," Echo corrected gently through her chest."…but their ripples did not…"
"That's not comforting," she whispered.
"…wasn't trying to comfort… was stating probability…"
She snorted softly. "Welcome back, Echo."
"…happy to be… home…"
Her hand paused over a sweater.
"Home," she repeated quietly.
Her chest ached.
She stuffed the sweater inside the duffel bag, grabbed toiletries, chargers, two books she'd pretended she had time to read, then hesitated at the nightstand.
Her fingers brushed over a small framed photo.
Blurry.
She and Jae-hyun laughing at some company event, Mira photobombing in the background.
She swallowed and tossed it into the bag too.
When she returned to the living room, Jae-hyun already had his phone, keys, and jacket in hand. His expression relaxed the moment he saw her.
"All done?" he asked.
She nodded. "Mostly."
"You can buy what you forget," he said. "I'll complain about it, but I'll still pay."
She rolled her eyes. "Classic CEO."
He took the bag from her shoulder before she could protest and slung it over his.
"Hey—"
"Your job is to walk and breathe," he cut in. "Preferably both at the same time."
"You're impossible."
"And yet," he said smoothly, hand finding the small of her back, "you still keep choosing me in every timeline. Questionable taste."
She tried not to melt at the casual, intimate touch.
Tried.
"Don't say things like that when we're about to be hunted by my evil alternate self," she muttered.
"Noted. I'll save them for when you're trying to sleep."
Her cheeks warmed again.
He guided her to the door.
Then stopped.
His body went still.
"Jae-hyun?" she whispered.
"Listen," he murmured.
She held her breath.
Faintly, from somewhere beyond the apartment door—
The sound of static.
Like a broken radio.
Like the machine—
No.
Not the machine.
Something else.
The static fizzled.
Then a soft, chilling laugh drifted through the hallway.
Her own laugh.
Or something very close to it.
Ha-rin froze.
Jae-hyun's arm moved around her waist again, pressing her back into his side, keeping her behind his shoulder.
Echo's voice flared:
"…SHE IS NEAR…"
A shadow passed the bottom edge of the door.
Slow.Unhurried.
Like whoever it was already knew they were inside.
A voice whispered, muffled through the wood.
It sounded like Ha-rin.
And not like her.
"You can run," it said."But you're running inside my echo."
Ha-rin's blood went ice-cold.
Broken Ha-rin.
Jae-hyun's grip tightened.
His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, voice like steel wrapped in velvet:
"Stay right behind me."
He reached for the doorknob with his free hand.
"Jae-hyun—what are you doing—"
"Opening it before she breaks it down."
"Are you insane—"
"Maybe," he breathed. "But I'm not letting her write this encounter without us choosing how it starts."
Her heart pounded so hard Echo could barely keep up.
He looked back at her—eyes dark, fierce, and impossibly gentle at the same time.
"Trust me," he said.
She didn't hesitate.
"I do."
He smiled faintly.
Then he unlocked the door.
And pulled it open.