POV: Seo Ji-won
The bathwater soaked through his shirt, clinging to his skin as he cradled her in his arms. The razor had already been kicked away. He didn't care where it landed.
She wasn't bleeding this time. That was the only grace tonight allowed.
Sae-ri's breathing was shallow, her shoulders trembling with that horrible silence he hated most—the one where she didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't speak. Just disappeared inside herself, somewhere he couldn't reach.
He wrapped a towel around her, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. She didn't resist.
Ji-won carried her to bed, laid her down gently, and tugged the blankets up over her legs even though the room was warm. Her thighs—he'd memorized them by now. Every raised scar, every angry pink gash that never healed properly, every mark she swore he'd never see but let him kiss anyway.
He sat on the edge of the bed and just watched her chest rise and fall.
---
Two years ago – Seoul
The week before he proposed.
"Do you think they'd have your eyes?" she asked quietly.
Ji-won looked up from where he was brushing her hair out with his fingers. "Who?"
"Our baby."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I think," he said, "they'd have your stubborn mouth and my eyes. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, they would be beautiful."
Sae-ri blinked fast, staring at the ceiling. "I'm scared. I've never wanted anything this much."
"You already have it," he said simply, brushing his thumb across her bare stomach. "You have me. You have them."
She turned toward him then, eyes shining. "Promise you won't leave if something happens."
He kissed her forehead.
"Something already happened," he said. "And I'm still here."
---
Present – Seoul
Ji-won poured whiskey into a glass with shaking hands.
He never drank. Not really. But tonight, he needed the burn.
Sae-ri had fallen asleep eventually. Her body curled toward the window, her hands clutched at her pillow like it could stop the ghosts in her chest. She talked in her sleep when she was exhausted. Small things. Pieces of memory.
Tonight she had said, "I want to go back," and "don't take them from me," and once, she whispered his name like it hurt.
Ji-won drained the glass in one swallow.
He had buried a child without ever holding them. And then he nearly lost the only woman who made him feel real.
That night—he remembered every second of it. The call from her driver. The red flashing lights. The way her dress was soaked in blood when he got to the hospital. The sound of her screaming when the doctor said she was no longer pregnant.
He had stayed outside her room for hours while her mother cried behind a curtain and her father punched a wall.
Ji-won hadn't made a sound.
He had just waited, hands clenched, until they let him in.
She'd looked at him and whispered, "I'm not a mother anymore."
He had sat beside her and said, "You're still everything."
She didn't believe him. Not then. Maybe not even now.
---
The sound of her voice dragged him back.
"Ji-won…"
He was already moving. Back to the bedroom. Back to her.
She was sitting up, hair a tangled mess, cheeks flushed. Her shirt had slipped off one shoulder. She looked dazed. Wrecked.
And heartbreakingly beautiful.
"I had a dream," she whispered. "You left me."
He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap, arms locking around her waist. "You know I never will."
Sae-ri looked up at him, searching his face for something.
"I don't know how to live like this," she said. "I'm so tired of pretending. I smile. I wave. I say I'm okay. But I'm not. I'm still in that car. I'm still bleeding. I can't get out."
Ji-won kissed her hard.
He didn't ask permission. He never did when she broke like this. His mouth claimed hers, not to silence her—but to tell her in every way she could understand: I'm here. You're not alone. You're mine.
Her legs wrapped around his hips before she could think.
"Let me forget," she gasped, clawing at his shirt.
"No," he said roughly, mouth against her neck. "Let me help you remember who you are."
He kissed her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breast. She shook beneath him, desperate, lost.
When he was inside her, it wasn't fast. It wasn't angry. It was everything.
He held her face with both hands, made her look at him while he moved inside her like they had all the time in the world.
"You're alive," he said. "You're beautiful. You're mine."
She sobbed against his shoulder when she came, her body arching, nails digging into his back.
And when she collapsed into him, trembling and wet and broken, he whispered:
"You're going to be okay. We both are."