It began as a weight in the air.
Not a sound. Not a word. Not even breath.
Just a heaviness that pressed against the skin of the world, seeping into his tiny body.
Han-woo's eyelids fluttered. His infant chest rose sharply, as if the air had grown thicker, harder to drink. He felt it sliding down his throat, cold and hot at once, burning and soothing, a contradiction that made him whimper.
Outside, voices moved again—low, steady, charged with something greater than language. He could not understand the words, but their rhythm carried power. Each syllable seemed to pull the heaviness closer.
And then, for a heartbeat, it touched him.
Not his hands. Not his face. Deeper. It pressed against the fracture inside him—the crack where the Gray man and the child-self met.
Han-woo gasped soundlessly. The sensation was unbearable, yet necessary, like water against parched lips. The Gray self recoiled, trembling, afraid of being drowned. But the child-self leaned forward instinctively, reaching without knowing how.
The name—Han-woo—rose again in the voices outside. And as it echoed through him, the heaviness bent, folding inward, responding as if it recognized him.
It did not enter fully. Not yet.
It only circled, testing, like a predator sniffing at prey, or a master weighing a disciple.
Han-woo lay helpless, pinned beneath its weight. Yet even in fear, he felt the fragile balance hold. His name—his unity—was not shattered. If anything, the force pressed tighter against it, as though the sound itself resonated with the unseen flow.
The Gray man inside whispered warnings. The child-self clung in hunger. Between them, Han-woo endured.
The first touch of Qi had come.
It came without warning.
A breath of something vast slipped into him, so faint he might have mistaken it for air—yet it was heavier, sharper, alive. It crawled across his skin like fire, yet sank into his lungs like cold water. His small chest rose and fell too quickly, the rhythm broken, as if his body itself had been startled awake.
For a moment, he thought it was another memory breaking loose from the gray—a phantom pain, or a dream of suffocation. But no. This was not memory. This was now.
The force lingered. Pressing. Testing. It seeped into his fragile flesh as though the world itself had finally noticed him.
Han-woo.
The name echoed inside him as the Qi brushed deeper. His unity shivered under its weight, stretched thin between his two selves. Was this a welcome… or an invasion? He could not tell. All he knew was that it was real. More real than the gray, more real than his past life's monotony.
The world had touched him.
And it would not let go.
It came without warning.
At first, it was nothing more than a prickle across his skin, a crawling sensation like ants on his arms. Then it thickened, pressing down, seeping into him. His tiny chest convulsed, sucking air in frantic gulps, but the air itself felt different—dense, sharp, as though it carried weight.
Something slid into him with the breath. Not air. Not warmth. A current. A tide.
It clawed into his lungs and spilled into his veins. His body—soft, weak, unfinished—was not made to carry it. Every nerve screamed at once. His fists clenched. His throat strained, but no cry came out. Only a trembling whimper, swallowed by the force pressing deeper.
It was alive.
That was what made it unbearable. This thing was not like heat or cold, not like hunger or thirst. It had an intent, a will. It noticed him. It was as though the entire world, silent until now, had bent down and breathed into his body, testing if he could hold even the smallest drop of its presence.
Han-woo.
The name shivered inside him, both shield and wound. The gray self clung to it, desperate, but the force did not care for names. It pressed harder, threading itself into his marrow, filling his stomach, his throat, his tiny, helpless heart.
He couldn't fight it. He couldn't move. He could only feel himself stretched thin, skin burning, bones aching as if they might shatter under the weight of something he could not contain.
And yet… he did not break.
The Qi lingered. It circled. It pulsed. It waited.
Tears ran hot down his cheeks, not from hunger or fear, but from the terror of being seen by the world itself. For the first time since awakening in this new body, he understood a truth deeper than words:
He was no longer invisible.
The world would not let him hide.
The pressure swelled.
His ribs rattled like brittle cages, too small to hold what was being poured into him. Every vein felt swollen, ready to burst. His ears roared with a thunder he could not escape. He tried to cry, but the sound strangled inside his throat. The Qi crushed his lungs, searing his breath into fire.
He was drowning—yet there was no water.He was burning—yet no flame touched him.He was freezing—yet his skin dripped with sweat.
It tore through him in all directions at once.
For a moment he thought he would die again, right here in this fragile shell, smothered by the weight of a world he could not even name. His vision went white. Then black. His mind fractured—snatches of his old self colliding with the helpless whimpers of the infant body.
No. Not again. Not yet.
But resistance was agony. Every thought of defiance only sharpened the claws of the force, driving it deeper, stripping him bare. Memories, fears, names—Gray, Han-woo, everything—felt as though they might be ripped out and scattered into nothing.
The sensation sharpened into hallucination.
He saw himself split in two—Gray, the weary man crushed by the old world, and Han-woo, the mewling infant trembling in his crib. The Qi flowed between them, not choosing, not caring. A river that might swallow both.
His chest seized. His tiny body convulsed, choking on spit, on milk sour in his throat. His fists beat weakly against the air, against nothing, against everything.
He could not endure. He could not surrender.
The Qi wanted him to do both.
And in the unbearable silence between breaths, he knew: if he failed this moment, if he let go, if he broke—he would vanish. Not reborn. Not remembered. Nothing.
Terror clawed deeper than pain.
He clung to the single word that still echoed inside him—Han-woo—his only rope, his only bridge between Gray and this infant self. He held it so tightly that his mind bled, until the syllables blurred, until he could no longer tell whether it was his name, or simply the sound of his soul screaming into the void.
And then—The Qi stopped.
Not gone, but withdrawing, like a predator satisfied with its test. His body sagged, soaked with sweat and tears, his mouth opening in a strangled cry that finally broke free. The sound was small. Pathetic. But alive.
Han-woo lived.
But now he knew what it meant:The world had touched him.And it would never leave him alone.