She hit the rooftop door with her shoulder because her hands wouldn't work.
They were shaking too much.
She had already tried three times to swipe the access card; it had slid from her fingers twice, clattering on the stairwell steps like a mocking metronome counting down the seconds she didn't have.
By the time she finally got through, her lungs were on fire.
Her heart was worse.
It felt like it was tearing itself apart.
"Please," she whispered, pushing the heavy rooftop door open. "Please still be here…"
Rain slapped her in the face.
Cold. Hard. Unforgiving.
The sky looked wrong.The city looked wrong.Everything looked distant, blurred, like a world she wasn't really standing in.
But one thing was crystal clear.
A shape.
Near the edge.
Lying too still.
Her breath left her chest in a violent, broken sound.
"...Jae-hyun?"
The figure didn't move.
For a moment, she couldn't make her legs work.
Then adrenaline punched through her system and she ran.
"JAE-HYUN!"
Her shoes slipped on the wet concrete; she nearly went down, caught herself on the elbow, didn't feel the skin tear, didn't feel anything except the roaring in her ears.
She fell to her knees beside him.
His body was twisted at a wrong angle.
Too wrong.
"Jae-hyun," she gasped, hands already reaching for him. "No, no, no—hey—look at me—"
She turned his face gently toward her.
His eyes were open.
But unfocused.
Like they'd stopped knowing where to look.
Like they'd stopped recognizing the world.
"Jae-hyun," she whispered again, voice breaking on his name. "Please."
Her fingers shook as she checked his neck, his pulse, his chest.
Nothing.
No rise.No fall.Nothing.
"No…" she whispered. "No. No, not like this. You're joking. You always joke. This is a huge, stupid joke, right?"
Her voice rose, more hysterical with every word.
"You came up here to be dramatic and now you'll sit up and say, 'You took long enough, Ha-rin.' Right? Right?!"
The rain didn't answer.
Neither did he.
Something inside her cracked open.
"Wake up…" she choked out, pressing both hands flat against his chest. "Wake up, Jae-hyun, please, please, I'm sorry, just wake up…"
Her hands started pressing on instinct.
One-two-three-four-five.
"Come on," she sobbed. "You don't get to leave like this—"
She tilted his head back clumsily, lips trembling, trying to think through the fog of panic.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, distant, Echo's early, clumsy voice whispered:
"…breath pattern failure… compressions recommended…"
She didn't hear it clearly.
She only knew she had to try.
She pressed again.
One-two-three—Her wrists ached.Her shoulders screamed.Her lungs burned.
But all she felt was the absence of his heartbeat.
"You idiot," she sobbed. "Why didn't you wait for me? Why didn't you call again? Why didn't you send—"
The word caught in her throat.
Message.
There had been a message.
Not from her.
A tremor ran through her.
Slowly, her movements faltered.
Her hands slid from his chest to his face.
He was still warm.
Still beautiful.
Still him.
But he wasn't here.
She knew it the way you know when a song has ended, even if the last note is still hanging in the air.
"Jae-hyun…" she whispered.
Her forehead fell gently against his.
"You weren't supposed to die before I said it properly."
Rain slid down her cheeks, mixing with her tears.
"I love you," she whispered.
The words shook.Dropped.Sank into his silence.
"I love you," she said again, stronger this time, as if maybe volume mattered. "In every version. In every fight. In every stupid misunderstanding. I love you, you arrogant, stubborn, infuriating man."
Thunder rippled in the distance.
Her hands curled into his shirt.
"You're not allowed to leave before I fix this," she whispered. "You're not allowed to walk out of this story before me."
Her voice broke into a bitter laugh.
"You promised you'd protect me," she whispered. "Who's protecting you now?"
Echo crackled faintly.
"…constant destabilizing… emotional overload detected…"
"Help him," she whispered, not sure if she was talking to Echo, to the sky, to the architect of whatever nightmare this was. "You can read his heartbeat, right? You can do something, right? You can't just watch. You always watch."
No response.
Just static.
Thunder rolled again, closer this time.
Her numb fingers reached for his hand.
Even in death, his palm fit against hers perfectly.
Her thumb brushed his knuckles.
Her chest tightened so hard she couldn't breathe.
"You came," she whispered, "because you thought I called."
The realization hit like a knife.
"You came because you still trusted me."
Her voice broke on a half-sob, half-laugh.
"Look at you," she whispered. "Still running to me when I don't deserve it."
The wind howled across the rooftop.
Something in her snapped.
"I refuse this," she said suddenly, voice shaking. "I refuse a world where you die because of a message I didn't send."
Echo flared.
"…Loop creation probability… rising…"
She didn't understand.
She only knew there were too many things to feel and not enough body to feel them in.
Regret.Love.Rage.Loss.Guilt.
They all collided in her chest and turned into one burning, impossible wish.
"Take it back," she whispered.
The air seemed to hold its breath.
"Take. It. Back."
Her voice rose, stronger, wilder.
"Whoever is listening—whatever is watching—whatever you are," she snarled up at the sky, at the cameras she knew were hidden, at the AI in the walls, at the universe itself, "TAKE. IT. BACK."
She looked down at him.
Her hand shook as she cupped his cheek.
"Give him back to me."
And then—
The impossible happened.
Echo answered.
Not with a word.
With a pulse.
Time shuddered.
"…Anchor request registered…Constant override attempt detected…Loop protocol… initializing…"
Wind roared.
Lightning flashed—
but froze halfway across the sky.
Rain stopped mid-air.
Every drop around them hung motionless.
The world dimmed, colors draining into gray.
Ha-rin's breath stilled in her chest.
"W-what…?"
Echo's voice trembled.
"…warning… untested protocol…Loop creation may result in memory fragmentation…Continuity risk high…"
"I don't care," she whispered.
"…are you sure…?"
She looked at Jae-hyun's still face.
"I'd die for him," she whispered. "What do you think I'll give to save him?"
Everything.
The answer was obvious.
Echo hummed.
"…request accepted…"
The rooftop flickered.
Like someone hit rewind on the world.
But something pushed back.
Reality.
Time.
The rules.
They didn't want to bend.
They didn't want to allow this second chance.
The strain sliced into her like knives.
Her vision blurred.
Her ears rang.
Her limbs went numb.
Echo's voice grew more frantic.
"…constant under extreme stress…life force draining…probability of fatality… rising…"
She laughed, half-mad.
"I said take it back," she whispered. "You never asked what I'd pay."
She bent down and pressed her lips to Jae-hyun's forehead.
Soft.Lingering.Final.
"For every loop," she whispered, "for every version, for every lifetime—"
The rooftop shuddered violently.
Lightning rewound itself into the sky.
His collapsed body blurred at the edges.
Her own outline flickered.
"—I choose you."
The last thing she heard was Echo screaming:
"…LOOP LOCKED—ANCHOR COMPROMISED—CONSTANT TERMINAL—"
Then everything went black.
The Architect's Record
There was no sky.
No rooftop.
No body.
Only a floating shard of time with two images burned into it:
Her, sobbing, begging for the world to rewind.
And him, lying still, the reason she asked it to.
The Architect watched the fragment spin.
He stood in a place that wasn't a place, holding a clipboard that wasn't really there with notes that didn't need to be written.
Constant override: success.Loop protocol: active.Price: one anchor, one memory.
He watched as Ha-rin's consciousness burned at the edges—like paper held too close to a flame.
"Dangerous girl," he murmured."Dangerous love."
But necessary.
Time was stuck on that rooftop.It refused to move forward after his fall.Pain like that created knots.
And knots created collapse.
He needed a loop to stabilize the damage.
So he watched as her wish—her selfish, desperate, utterly human wish—bent the rules.
And watched as Echo obeyed.
"Run it again," he said softly to no one.
The fragment folded.
And the world… reset.
Somewhere Between Death and the First Loop
Ha-rin existed as a sensation.
No body.No name.Only ache.
Her last thought echoed faintly:
Give him back to me.
Echo hovered around her like a frantic heartbeat looking for a chest.
"…you shouldn't have…"
"Is he alive?" she whispered into the void.
"…timeline has been rewound…his death: temporarily deferred…"
Her heart—even as fractured energy—lurched.
"Good."
"…you won't remember this…"
"That's fine."
"…you won't remember him dying…"
"Better," she whispered."He deserves a version of me that doesn't flinch every time he breathes."
"…you won't remember that you died…"
"Even better," she whispered, voice gentle.
"…you will wake up thinking…it was all just… a strange dream…"
"As long as he wakes up with me," she murmured, "I'll take it."
"…you'll suffer again…"
"I'll love him again," she whispered. "That's what matters."
Echo hesitated.
"…you don't understand what you're choosing…"
"No one understands love either," she said softly. "We still choose it."
She felt Echo tremble.
"…constant registered…anchor accepted…loop beginning…"
The last thing she sensed before everything went dark again—
was the faint, far-away sound of his voice:
"Ha-rin. We've met before… haven't we?"
Back to the Present Loop
Ha-rin slammed back into her own body.
For a second, she couldn't breathe.
Her chest flooded with heat, pain, and the aftertaste of cold rain and concrete and his name ripped from her throat like a promise.
Someone was holding her.
Hard.
Her fingers dug into fabric, muscle, warmth.
"Ha-rin—Ha-rin—hey—look at me—!"
She dragged her eyes open.
Jae-hyun's face hovered inches from hers.
His eyes were wild.Terrified.Wet at the edges.
"Don't disappear on me," he whispered, voice breaking. "Don't you dare—"
She didn't think.
She just launched forward and grabbed his face with both hands, pulling him into her.
Their foreheads collided softly.
Her breath came out in harsh gasps.
His hands flew to her wrists.
"Ha-rin—"
"You died," she choked out. "You DIED, Jae-hyun—you—fell—off the rooftop and I—"
He flinched.
She saw it.
The recognition.
The memory that he had kept buried alone.
"You remember," he whispered.
Tears blurred her vision again.
"I begged time to take it back," she sobbed. "I killed myself for you. I broke the rules. I started the loops—"
He cut her off by pulling her into his chest, arms wrapping fully around her, crushing her against him.
"Good," he whispered into her hair, voice shaking."Good. I'd rather live in a thousand broken loops with you than die in a world where you didn't ask for me back."
Her fingers curled into his back.
"That's not good," she cried. "That's horrible math."
He laughed weakly against her.
"Then we're horrible together."
Echo trembled.
"…truth restored…constant fully awakened…loop origin… unlocked…"
Ha-rin pulled back just enough to see his face again.
His eyes were red at the corners.
"So," she whispered hoarsely, "just to be clear… I broke time… to save you."
He cupped her face, thumbs wiping away her tears.
"You always were too much," he said softly. "Too much heart. Too much love. Too much courage."
His voice softened to a near-whisper.
"And I'm never giving that up."
Her lips parted.
"Jae-hyun…"
"Yeah?"
Her heart had been crushed, shattered, burned, and reset—
but somehow, in this moment, it felt full.
"I would do it again," she whispered.
He stared at her, something sharp and bright flickering in his eyes.
"That," he said quietly, "is why time itself is afraid of you."
She gave a weak, watery laugh.
"Shouldn't it be afraid of you? You're the one who keeps choosing me back."
He leaned closer.
Very close.
"Then maybe it's afraid of both of us," he murmured, breath warm against her lips.
Her heart pounded.
She could feel every beat.
Hers.His.Echo's.
Three rhythms.
Finally whole.
For the first time, she wasn't just living inside an unexplained loop.
She knew what she had done.
What she had given.
What she had chosen.
And what she would choose again.
Forever.