The morning when everything truly shifted… there was no scream, no sign, no message to warn of the coming storm.
Just silence.
A silence so heavy, so deep, so unusual that Nari felt it before even opening her eyes, like a frozen shadow sitting on her chest, like a bad omen crawling slowly up her spine.
She reached for her phone automatically — a gesture that had become almost instinctive — but the screen stayed black with notifications, like a page that had been ripped out of her life.
No calls.
No messages.
Not even that little beep she pretended to hate but waited for like a drug.
Sion had vanished.
A clean, brutal, surgical disappearance, as if he had cut their bond with a cold knife.
Nothing left.
As if the nights she'd spent feeling him breathe against her skin had never existed.
As if his deep voice, his words whispered against her mouth, his threats disguised as caresses… had been nothing more than a fever dream.
Nari sat on the bed, the sheet slipped to her waist, her heart beating slowly, painfully, as if each beat required immense effort.
She stared at the dark, lifeless screen, as though by looking long enough she could force it to vibrate, to light up, to return to her.
But nothing.
She inhaled.
Exhaled.
But everything felt wrong.
Even her own body felt foreign.
— What if something happened to him? she thought, absurdly.
Then, immediately, like an inner slap:
— No. He owes you nothing. He doesn't belong to you.
Lie.
She knew.
His absence was eating her alive because he wasn't nothing.
Because he had left something inside her — something dangerous, burning, alive — an invisible imprint she hated as much as she needed.
And that was the beginning of the fall.
A slow, visceral, irreversible fall.
Each hour without him became another weight crushing her ribs, each breath a little harder, each thought a little more intrusive.
As if her heart were slipping through her fingers and she couldn't hold it.
While Nari slowly drowned in anxiety, on the other side of Seoul, Sion's life erupted into chaos he hadn't chosen — chaos he knew too well — chaos that wore the face of the only woman he had ever loved and hated: his mother.
As he was on his way to see Nari, his phone rang, displaying the clinic's name like an ominous warning.
— Mr. Jeon, your mother is in crisis. She's screaming that you're dead.
Everything in him froze instantly, as if his heart had skipped a beat, as if an old wound had violently reopened somewhere beneath his ribs.
Without thinking, he turned the car around, ignoring honking horns, angry drivers, distant sirens — nothing existed anymore, nothing except that sentence.
"Your mother is in crisis."
Those words had rocked his childhood.
They were his mornings, his nights, his routine.
They were carved into his flesh like an old burn.
When he entered the room, chaos swallowed him whole.
His mother was screaming, hair wild, her gown twisted, her gaze frantic, lost, doubled, too intense, too wide — those eyes, he knew them: eyes that saw a world no one else saw, eyes that had mistaken him for a monster, a demon, a corpse haunting her nights.
— OH MY SON HAS COME TO SEE ME FROM AMONG THE DEAD! she screamed, arms stretched toward him as if reaching for a ghost.
— Mom… mom, it's me, I'm here, look at me, I'm alive… he murmured in a surprisingly soft voice, a voice he never used with anyone, a voice that belonged only to her.
He approached slowly, like one approaches a wounded animal, and took her cold, fragile hand — the same hand that had hit him sometimes, caressed him other times, gripped him too tightly in panic, pushed him away like a stranger.
She was trembling.
The room vibrated with screams, alarms, agitation.
Then suddenly, she grabbed her water glass and smashed it on the floor, so violently the nurses jumped.
The shards scattered like pieces of night — sharp, glittering.
— I TOLD YOU MY SON IS DEAD! she screamed again, her voice shredded by terror. I CAN'T LIVE ANYMORE! I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT MY SON!
And before anyone could move, she seized a shard of glass — long, bright, almost beautiful — and plunged it into her chest with such determination that the blood burst instantly.
— NO! MOM!
He lunged toward her.
The shard fell, stained red.
Blood poured, hot, too hot, slipping between Sion's fingers as he pressed, held, fought.
— Stay with me… stay with me, he whispered, his voice shaking despite himself.
She lifted her eyes, a mad smile stretching across her lips.
— My son… you came to get me…
Then she collapsed.
Nurses rushed in. Machines beeped.
Someone gently pushed him aside.
— Sir, let us handle this.
— Mr. Jeon, it's not deep, breathe.
— We're stabilizing her.
— She will stay under observation.
He stood there, hands covered in blood, breath short, heart lodged too high in his throat.
A metallic smell rose — familiar — belonging to his childhood, to those nights he slept against the door to keep her from leaving, to those mornings he found her dazed, cold, lost, to those days when she said she would die and wanted to take him with her.
He had never had any family but her.
No softness.
No refuge.
Just this broken woman who loved him too much, too badly, too dangerously.
And deep inside him, a sentence resurfaced — one he had repeated to himself his whole life:
Emotions are for the weak.
Love destroys.
Attachment kills.
So he stayed.
At the clinic.
At her bedside.
Without moving.
Without thinking of Nari.
Or rather: burying her so deep she disappeared beneath the panic, the duty, the guilt, the old fear of losing the only person he'd ever had.
And despite himself, something cracked.
A part of him wanted to call her.
A part of him wanted her voice.
A part of him needed her calm, her warmth, her dark eyes looking at him as if she could see through everything.
But that part — he suffocated it.
Crushed it.
Killed it.
Because loving meant dying.
And he didn't have the right to die.
A few days passed — heavy, endless, devouring.
For Nari, each hour felt like a pit.
Sion's silence — that cold, brutal, impenetrable silence — slashed her chest like a blade slowly turning.
She thought of him when she woke.
Thought of him drinking her coffee.
Thought of him walking down the agency hallway, under the cold neon lights, surrounded by colleagues who laughed behind her back like crows.
She thought she saw him everywhere: at the elevator, behind the windows, at the corner of a desk.
But it was always just emptiness.
And every night, despite herself, despite the shame, despite the obvious truth, she checked her phone with that dull pain lodged in her throat.
No message.
No call.
Nothing.
And that nothing crushed her heart.
Then, one afternoon, the frustration, the fear, the absence — everything melted into an obsession she could no longer ignore.
She left work early, walked down the avenue, and headed toward the tower where Sion lived — that arrogant glass tower that seemed to look down on her as if she were nothing.
Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might split her chest open.
She entered.
The icy air-conditioning bit into her skin.
The lobby was silent, too silent, like a temple where she didn't belong.
She went up, floor after floor, breath short, fingers clenched around the strap of her bag.
Then she arrived.
In front of his door.
Right there.
She was about to knock…
when a voice behind her made her jump.
— Go grab a few things. I'll come back if needed. I'll wait here.
She froze.
Her stomach tightened.
It was him.
Sion.
He turned his head.
Their eyes met.
And what she saw in that exact moment pierced her straight through the blood.
His eyes — those burning, heavy, dark eyes that usually devoured her — were cold.
Cold like steel.
Cold like a slammed door.
Cold as if she had never existed.
— Nari?
His voice no longer vibrated.
No tension.
No desire.
No warmth.
Just… nothing.
She tried to swallow the tremor in her voice.
— I'm sorry to bother you… I was just passing by…
Lie.
Ridiculous.
Pathetic.
She flushed instantly, painfully aware of her own stupidity, aware she had come to throw herself at him like an idiot.
Sion stared at her without a word.
A wall.
A void.
An absence of reaction that crushed her chest.
— Sion… are you okay? she whispered, a dull fear lodged in her throat.
He narrowed his eyes.
A dark flicker passed through his gaze.
He was mentally exhausted, destroyed by what he had just lived with his mother, eaten alive by a fear he had no right to admit.
And she had shown up there, fragile, trembling, ready to hand him an emotion he could not accept.
So he reacted the way he had learned to react all his life:
He bit before he could be touched.
He hurt before he could be hurt.
— What do you want?
Mind your own business.
His voice snapped, dry, frozen, almost contemptuous.
She stepped back.
As if he had slapped her.
— Did I… do something wrong? she stammered, eyes blurring.
And inside him, something tore.
Because a part of him wanted to pull her into his arms, to kiss her, to tell her he was scared, that he was lost, that he didn't know how to breathe anymore.
But another part — older, stronger, darker — screamed at him:
Emotions make you weak.
She can destroy you.
Shut her up.
Destroy her.
Before she destroys you.
So he smiled.
A horrifying smile.
Cruel.
A smile he had never used on her.
— Hey, little slut…
You think I fucked you once so now I'm gonna marry you?
She froze.
Her breath stopped.
The world blurred.
He continued, voice low, sharp, crafted to wound.
— You were just a toy.
A pastime.
A way to kill boredom.
You were so easy to get it bored me.
It felt like someone had opened her chest and crushed her heart with their bare hands.
But he wasn't done.
— And you loved getting fucked so much you forgot your little boyfriend.
You're pathetic.
She would have preferred he hit her.
Yelled.
Insulted her with anger.
But that tone…
that calm, detached tone…
was worse than anything.
She felt a sob rising in her throat.
A sob she tried to swallow.
But her eyes betrayed her.
The tears rose — hot, humiliating, uncontrollable.
— Why…? she breathed.
He looked at her as if she were no one.
— Because you're weak.
And weak people bore me.
This time, she collapsed.
Her legs gave out.
She fell to her knees, right there, on the cold floor, unable to breathe through the violence of his words.
And Sion turned away.
Without a look.
Without hesitation.
He got into his car, slammed the door, and drove off.
Sion's car vanished into traffic, swallowed by the night as if it had never existed, as if everything they had lived had been a lie, an unfinished dream, something impossible to touch.
Nari remained still in the middle of the parking lot, her knees hitting the pavement still warm from the day, her trembling hands pressed to the ground as if she needed it to keep from falling completely.
Then the pain came.
Not a soft pain.
Not a vague pain.
A sharp, brutal, violent pain — a tearing ripped out by hand.
— WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH?!
The scream escaped her before she could hold it back.
A torn scream, animal, ripped straight from her gut.
A scream that echoed against the residence walls, got lost in the air, and came crashing back down on her.
She gritted her teeth, breath ragged, tears streaming as if some dam had burst, unable to regain control, unable to understand how a man she barely knew had managed to slip his hand directly into her heart and crush it so easily.
She stayed there for a long time.
On her knees.
Broken.
Crushed.
Frozen in a pain unlike any other — not even the pain of childhood, not even the pain of her mother dying days earlier — that one was colder, quieter.
This one was fire.
An inferno.
A poison spreading through every vein.
Passersby avoided her, confused, embarrassed, no one daring to approach.
She heard nothing, saw nothing, nothing but that pain devouring her.
It felt like something had been ripped out of her belly, something essential, as if the only thread holding her upright had been cut.
When she finally managed to stand, her legs trembled so hard it looked like they might give out at any second — but she walked anyway, like a ghost, crossing the streets of Seoul without seeing the lights, without hearing the horns, without feeling the fine rain that started falling again, sticking her wet hair to her face.
She went home like that — frozen, her face wrecked, eyes red.
The door slammed behind her.
A sharp, brutal noise, like a reminder of reality.
Her boyfriend was there, arms crossed, face flushed with anger, chest rising sharply as if he'd been holding back a scream for hours.
— WHERE WERE YOU?!
YOU KEEP DISAPPEARING LATELY!
His voice exploded in the apartment, but Nari didn't react.
Her gaze slid over him, empty, almost transparent.
— You… leave me alone.
The words fell, cold, sharp, almost mechanical.
She walked past him without giving him another glance.
He stood frozen, mouth slightly open, unable to understand what had just happened, unable to imagine the storm devouring her from the inside.
She slammed the bedroom door, locked it, and collapsed onto the bed, knees drawn to her chest.
And there, in the dark, the truth hit her even harder.
Without mercy.
Without pause.
Without breath.
— It's better this way… she whispered.
— It was nothing but sex… nothing but sex…
She tried to convince herself.
She tried to rebuild walls around her heart.
She tried to cling to the simplest lies, the phrases that soothe, the excuses we repeat so we don't fall apart.
But the words rang hollow.
The emptiness inside her was stronger.
The tears came back, quieter this time, sliding slowly down her cheeks — cold, salty, bitter.
She pressed a hand to her stomach, as if trying to hold something in, as if trying to keep her heart from spilling out completely.
— I'll forget him…
— I'll forget him fast…
— I'll go back to the life I had before…
A bland life.
A life without fire.
A life without Sion.
A sob shook her chest.
Then another.
And another.
And that night, Nari finally understood the truth she had refused to admit:
She had just lost far more than a man.
She had lost the only place she had ever felt alive.