There was something about the way the rain fell that night. It didn't tap gently like it usually did; it pounded the roof like a warning, an omen. Ji-hoon sat by the cracked window of the old motel room, fingers twitching slightly on the edge of the sill, as if itching to play a piano that no longer existed. The storm outside mirrored the storm in his chest.
He had almost forgiven Siwan. Almost. That word had started to feel like a blade in his throat.
It wasn't easy to reach that point. For days after the fire, Ji-hoon had been silent, detached from everyone—Joon-won, Hye-jin, even himself. He'd wandered through memories and scars, grappling with everything Siwan had done. He remembered the twisted smile on Siwan's face when he taunted him during the fire, the laugh when he revealed everything about the cologne, about Yoo Ara, about how long he'd been orchestrating it all. Ji-hoon thought he could bury it, that he could be the better man. Music had always been his compass. Music, and maybe the soft, tentative hand of forgiveness.
But then the video leaked.
A surveillance clip. Grainy footage. Siwan, two days after the fire, bruised and stitched but not broken. Laughing. Drinking. Bragging. Saying Ji-hoon would never have the guts to finish what he started. That he was still blind in every way that mattered. And Ji-eun—God, poor Ji-eun—caught in the background, trying to shut him up, trying to stop it before it spread. But it did.
Joon-won had shown Ji-hoon the footage reluctantly, trying to soften the blow. "I didn't want you to see this, but... you needed to."
Ji-hoon hadn't said a word. Not a flinch. Not even a blink. But that night, he picked up a pencil and a sheet of music paper and wrote—not notes, but steps. A plan. Precise. Cold.
Forgiveness was off the table.
He began crafting the trap like he'd craft a concerto. He mapped every movement, every variable, like he was orchestrating a performance with Siwan as the unwilling soloist.
Step one: Reconnection. Ji-hoon sent Ji-eun a message. A small one. "I need to talk to him. Alone."
Step two: Misdirection. He let rumors spread—rumors that he was leaving, retiring, moving to another country. He played the broken artist well. Newspapers loved it. It lulled Siwan into arrogance.
Step three: The venue. An abandoned practice hall once owned by the conservatory. Ji-hoon secured it, cleared it out, and laid out the stage. Not with instruments. With contingencies. Tools. Escape routes. Traps.
Step four: The invitation. Anonymous, untraceable. "One last performance. Come alone."
And Siwan came.
Ji-hoon heard his footsteps first. Even blind, he knew them—sharp, impatient. Siwan entered like he owned the place, like he owned everything.
"You never learn, do you?" Siwan laughed. "I expected a letter, maybe a white flag. But this... this is cute."
Ji-hoon stood at the center of the room. Calm. Still. Waiting. "You should've stayed gone."
"And miss your grand finale? Please. What are you going to do, Ji-hoon? Play me to death?"
That's when the lights cut.
Darkness swallowed the room, but for Ji-hoon, it made no difference. It was his world.
He moved fast. Rope. Steel wire. A cane that wasn't just a cane. Every step he took was rehearsed. Every sound was a cue. He cornered Siwan like a predator—two steps ahead, always.
Siwan stumbled, cursed, swung wildly. "What the hell is this?!"
"You thought the fire was the end? You think I survived all that just to let you walk away again?"
Their fight wasn't elegant. It wasn't choreographed. It was brutal.
Siwan tackled him, fists flying. Ji-hoon's jaw cracked, but he twisted, turned, slammed his cane into Siwan's ribs. Bones met steel. Something gave.
Blood spattered the wall.
Ji-hoon shoved him back, dragging him across the floor, slamming a piano lid open and pinning Siwan's arm in it. Wood splintered. Screams echoed.
"I wanted to forgive you," Ji-hoon growled. "I thought maybe—maybe if I let go, the music could heal what you destroyed. But you spit on it. You burned her memory. You laughed."
Siwan, panting, bleeding, still laughed. "You're just like me now. You know that, right? No applause, no redemption. Just blood."
Ji-hoon pulled back. The silence between them was deafening.
"No," he whispered. "I'm nothing like you."
And then he struck again.
The night screamed around them. The walls bore witness. The room that once held music now held the sounds of justice, fury, grief. Ji-hoon didn't stop—not until he knew Siwan couldn't get up again.
Forgiveness had a sound once.
But tonight, it was drowned by something louder.
Ji-hoon waited in the darkened corridor, still, silent. The piano room ahead was quiet—eerily so. He could feel the shift in the air, the static before the storm. His hands, though calloused from years of keys, trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the weight of what he was about to do. The scent of cedarwood and smoke still clung to his coat, and beneath that, the faint metallic whisper of the blade hidden in his sleeve.
He had rehearsed this—like a composition. Every step, every breath, like a rhythm he knew by heart. His cane tapped the floor once. Twice. Then he stilled it. Timing mattered. The next move had to be perfect.
Inside the room, Siwan played a soft chord on the piano. It was mocking, casual, as if he were taunting Ji-hoon, luring him in with familiarity. A lullaby turned into a death march. The bastard always knew how to twist the beautiful into grotesque.
Ji-hoon stepped forward.
"You always choose silence before the scream," Siwan said without turning around. "So poetic, Ji-hoon. But you forget—I compose too."
Ji-hoon didn't respond. Words were useless now. He reached the doorframe, inhaled. The scent was there again. Cologne. The same one from all those years ago. His mother's blood had smelled like iron and cologne. Siwan wore it like a trophy.
"You think you're two steps ahead, but I've always been behind you, haven't I?" Siwan continued, his fingers drifting over the keys. "Every performance, every award, every ounce of sympathy you got—it was my absence that made you special. But you're just a broken prodigy with a vendetta. You're nothing without me."
Ji-hoon lunged. His cane cracked hard against the side of the piano, splintering wood, missing Siwan by a breath. Siwan sprang from the bench, grabbing a music stand and swinging it blindly toward Ji-hoon's head. Ji-hoon ducked, then rammed his shoulder into Siwan's chest, slamming him against the wall.
The breath rushed out of Siwan's lungs, but he didn't stop. He reached for Ji-hoon's face, clawing at it, trying to gouge where he thought his eyes were. Ji-hoon snarled—actual rage now, unrestrained—and drove his elbow into Siwan's chin. A crack. Blood. Maybe a tooth.
"You killed her," Ji-hoon hissed. "And you smiled after."
Siwan spat blood onto the floor. "She deserved it. She wanted to leave the academy. Leave him. She would've ruined it all."
"She was my mother!" Ji-hoon roared.
They struggled across the room, knocking over music stands, crashing into shelves. Ji-hoon's blade glinted as he drew it. Siwan saw the flash too late. A slice across his forearm left a gash dripping red.
"You want to kill me?" Siwan growled, gripping his wound. "Then do it. You've rehearsed it, haven't you? Composed your grand finale?"
Ji-hoon was breathing hard now, blade trembling in his grip. "I should. I will. But not like this."
Siwan laughed through the pain. "Of course. You want an audience."
"No," Ji-hoon said. "I want you to know I've already won."
He swung the cane low, sweeping Siwan's legs out from under him. The older man crashed to the floor, back hitting hard, head bouncing once off the piano pedal board. Ji-hoon stood over him, panting. The blade glinted again.
But Ji-hoon didn't strike.
He leaned in, close enough to hear Siwan wheezing, close enough for him to smell the blood. "I've planted everything," Ji-hoon said. "Every recording. Every lie you told. Joon-won leaked it all. You'll be known not as a genius. Not even as a murderer. Just as a disgrace who destroyed everything he touched."
Siwan's eyes widened. "You're bluffing."
"Then get up and check the news." Ji-hoon stepped back. "But you'll find you've got nowhere left to go."
For a second, just one second, Ji-hoon almost saw something crack in Siwan. Not fear. Something worse. Emptiness. As if for the first time, Siwan realized he'd lost.
Then it shifted again—pure rage.
"You think you've won?" Siwan barked, pushing himself up. "You think this will undo what I did? You're just like her! Weak. Hopeful. Pathetic."
Ji-hoon didn't hesitate. He slammed his cane down on Siwan's hand. Bones snapped beneath it. Siwan screamed.
"This isn't for hope," Ji-hoon said, voice like steel. "This is for every night I couldn't sleep. Every time I heard her lullaby and wished it could drown out your laughter. This is for the life you ripped apart and never once apologized for."
Siwan clutched his mangled hand, face twisted in agony. "You want me dead? Then kill me. Stop dancing around it!"
"I'm not killing you yet," Ji-hoon whispered. "Because that would be a mercy. And you don't get mercy."
He turned and walked away.
Behind him, Siwan slumped against the piano, blood smearing the ivory keys. "You'll regret this," he muttered. "One day, you'll look in the mirror and see me."
Ji-hoon didn't answer. He stepped back into the hallway, the storm of footsteps approaching—security, police, Joon-won—flooding behind him. The moment cracked like thunder, everything finally unraveling.
The door shut behind him with a soft click.
Like the end of a piece.
Like the silence after the last note.
But in his chest, the music hadn't stopped.
It was just beginning again.
Siwan didn't move for a moment. The blood on the keys looked like ink smeared on sheet music. His breathing was shallow, ragged, a mix of pain and fury bubbling beneath his broken form. The weight of his crushed hand made his vision pulse with white-hot bursts, but even that wasn't enough to drown the hate in his chest.
Ji-hoon was gone—but the rage remained.
He pulled himself up, slipping in his own blood, and laughed through clenched teeth. "You don't get to write the ending, Ji-hoon. Not without me."
He staggered toward the far wall, opening the hidden cabinet behind the curtain—the one where he'd stashed the emergency burner phone, a syringe, and something far more dangerous. If Ji-hoon thought he had revealed everything… he hadn't seen the final piece.
Ji-hoon, meanwhile, stood outside in the rain, still trembling. Not from fear—his adrenaline had burned through that—but from restraint. He had wanted to kill him. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Literally. And that truth shook him more than he expected. He knew he had changed. And yet, what frightened him most wasn't that he had almost killed Siwan—it was that a part of him still wanted to.
Joon-won's voice snapped him out of it. "We have a problem."
Ji-hoon turned sharply. "What kind of problem?"
Joon-won held up his phone. "Siwan had a failsafe. He sent out a message—some kind of recorded confession—but not the kind we expected. It's twisted. Edited. He made it look like you killed your mother."
Ji-hoon's blood turned to ice. "What?"
"He spliced together audio. Conversations you two had. Manipulated footage from the conservatory's cameras. It's fake, but it looks real. He's trying to rewrite the story one last time."
Ji-hoon clenched his jaw. "Where is it now?"
Joon-won pointed toward the security office. "Already uploading to a private server. I'm trying to intercept it."
"No," Ji-hoon muttered. "He's too smart for that. He has a backup. There's another location. He always—he always kept something off-grid. In the studio vault."
"The locked one?"
Ji-hoon nodded. "Where we used to record together. He used to call it 'our mausoleum'." His voice cracked slightly. "That's where he'd bury his secrets."
Without another word, Ji-hoon turned and ran. Rain lashed across his face, but he didn't care. His legs burned, his lungs screamed, but he pushed harder, cane swinging with each stride as he sprinted down the path to the old studio building, tucked behind the conservatory like a forgotten organ in an abandoned chapel.
The vault door was heavy. Old-school. No digital locks—just a combination, one Ji-hoon remembered like a piece of sheet music: 4-7-9-1.
It clicked open.
Inside was dark. Cold. And filled with memories that should've stayed dead.
He stepped in, feeling the echo of his mother's voice in this place. Her laughter. Her humming. Her corrections as he fumbled over difficult passages. He let that pain settle in his chest, grounding him.
But then he heard it.
Breathing.
Siwan was there.
"I knew you'd come," Siwan said from the shadows. "I knew you'd want to see the truth."
Ji-hoon didn't answer. His hand brushed the blade again, hidden beneath his sleeve.
Siwan stepped forward, blood still drying on his shirt. One eye was swollen nearly shut. "You think you've won. But I wrote the last verse. I composed your legacy."
He gestured to the small recording console glowing faintly in the corner. "One push, and the world sees what I made. You, the killer. Your mother, the traitor. Me? The martyr."
Ji-hoon moved like lightning.
He hurled his cane, hitting the console square. Sparks flew. Glass shattered. The machine sparked and died, plunging the room into silence.
Siwan lunged in blind fury, slamming into Ji-hoon. They both hit the floor hard, grappling like wolves. Fists struck flesh. Teeth gnashed. Ji-hoon rolled on top and landed a blow straight to Siwan's jaw. Another. Another. He didn't even know how many.
Then he stopped—blade in hand—hovering an inch above Siwan's neck.
"I should," Ji-hoon said, panting. "I should end this."
Siwan was bleeding from the nose, from the mouth, from his ego. He spat at Ji-hoon's cheek. "Then do it. Prove me right."
Ji-hoon's hand trembled.
"I'll never stop," Siwan whispered. "Even if you kill me… you'll still hear me. In your music. In your sleep. You're nothing without me."
Ji-hoon stood.
"You're right," he said coldly. "I'll hear you. But not because you matter. Because I survived you."
He turned toward the vault door, leaving Siwan behind in the dark, bleeding and broken.
But this time, there would be no encore.
No applause.
Only silence.
And Ji-hoon finally welcomed it.