Days passed, though Joon could no longer measure them clearly. Snow fell without end, blurring the sky into the earth, turning time into a single, unbroken whiteness.
He clung to Hana more than ever. When they walked, he kept her hand in his, almost painfully tight. When they rested, he pressed his forehead to hers, desperate for her warmth. She let him — never pulling away — but he could feel something shifting beneath her stillness.
One evening, they sat on the steps of their hut, watching the snowfall gather like ash. Joon tried to make his voice light, teasing.
"Do you remember when you slipped in the river? You laughed so loudly I thought the snow would collapse on us."
Hana smiled faintly, though her eyes were distant. "You pulled me out."
"I thought you'd vanish," Joon said quietly.
She looked at him then, really looked — and her smile faltered. "Don't speak like that."
He tried to laugh it off, but the sound came hollow. The silence between them was thicker than the snow.
That night, Joon awoke to find Hana sitting at the edge of the bed. The moonlight caught her neck, and for the first time he saw it clearly.
The mark.
A faint seam running just beneath her skin, as though her body remembered the hands that had shaped it. Only now, the seam had deepened, darkened, spreading like a bruise.
"Hana…"
She flinched, pulling the collar of her dress higher. "Don't."
Joon reached for her, voice trembling. "You can't hide this from me. It's worse than before."
Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but her voice was steady. "If you keep searching for truth, you'll destroy everything we have."
His throat tightened. "But if none of this is real, what do we have?"
Her hands shook as she cupped his face. "We have this moment. Isn't that enough?"
Joon closed his eyes, leaning into her palms. Her touch was warm, achingly real. For a heartbeat, he wanted to surrender, to believe her. To live only inside their laughter, their kisses, their fragile joy.
But when he opened his eyes, the seam at her neck seemed to pulse, faintly, like a wound that would never heal.
And he knew — no matter how tightly he held her, their world was beginning to break.