The room wasn't empty.
It was silent — which isn't the same thing.
A thick silence.
A heavy silence.
A silence that watched.
Her voice came out in a breath, fragile:
— … Minjun?
No answer.
Just that dense, heavy, suffocating silence, vibrating faintly like a low hum in her ears.
She stepped forward a few paces.
The floorboards creaked under her soles.
Seoul's grey light slipped through the half-open curtains, a dead, cold light that made everything look frozen.
The bed, unmade but not really used.
The suitcase, open but not overturned, not searched — just… waiting.
But that wasn't what knocked the air out of her.
It was the smell.
An almost invisible smell, but one that hit her nose like a ghost trace.
The smell of a man's cologne mixed with bitter coffee.
The smell of a sleepless night.
A smell that said: "he was here less than an hour ago."
A cup still warm on the desk.
A faint coffee stain on the rim.
A barely visible wisp of steam still rising, as if someone had left it there less than an hour ago.
Her phone vibrated.
One name:
"Mom".
Again.
Again.
Again.
The vibrations made the nightstand shake, a dry, nervous trembling, like a cry for help that no longer managed to get through.
Nari felt her heart tighten, literally, like an icy hand wrapping around her ribs.
— Minjun… where are you…
She opened the bathroom: empty.
She pulled back the curtains: nothing.
She checked under the bed like a panicked child looking for a monster: nothing.
A silence…
A void…
But above all, a deliberate absence.
An absence that didn't look like a panicked escape, nor an accident.
An absence that felt planned, placed, prepared.
Nari felt her fingers clench on her dress.
Then she saw the photo.
Laid out on the pillow.
Not carelessly.
Placed as if someone wanted her to see it.
A photo of the two of them.
Perfect smiles, artificial happiness, summer light.
A banal but precious shot.
Torn.
Cleanly.
With precision.
And it was her face that was missing.
As if someone had wanted to cut her out of her own life.
A shiver ran down her spine so violently she had to lean against the wall.
Her legs wouldn't respond anymore.
She walked to the bed, sat down mechanically, the mattress sinking under her trembling weight.
Her gaze then fell on the nightstand.
The ring.
Placed there.
Straight.
Aligned.
Like an object being returned.
And there — everything stopped.
Her breath.
The noise of the street.
Her thoughts.
She closed her fingers around the ring, the cold metal biting into her skin.
She stood up slowly and looked at herself in the mirror hanging across from the bed.
Her reflection stared back at her, impassive, almost cold — a reflection that looked like a version of herself she no longer recognized, a version sculpted by pain, longing, fear.
She wiped her tears away with her fingertips.
And she left.
Without looking back.
Without looking at the ring.
Without touching the photo.
Without closing the door.
She pressed one hand against the icy wall, her palm still trembling from the scene she had just lived, from the emptiness of the room, from the torn photo, from the abandoned ring like a last breath, from that absence.
The air had a metallic taste.
Heavy.
Acrid.
Almost electric.
She had the feeling that even the hallway neon lights were vibrating louder, as if reality itself were stretching around her, contracting, breathing too fast.
Her thoughts were a torrent, a mess of fear and certainty, of brutal lucidity.
She inhaled.
The breath slid into her lungs like a cold blade.
Then she walked.
Not fast.
No.
Not yet.
Her body moved at the pace of someone walking toward a truth they fear, a truth that burns them but can no longer be avoided.
A fine rain had started to fall when she stepped out of the hotel, an almost invisible but icy drizzle that settled on her skin like a dust of glass.
Seoul, in that grey-blue dawn light, seemed to be breathing her anxiety.
Cars drove past, distant honks forming a pulse similar to her too-fast heart, the sidewalk exhaling the smell of cold wet stone.
The LED signs, even in daylight, flickered weakly in washed-out colors, drowned by the low, heavy cloud of rain pressing down on the city.
And everything inside her was screaming the same name.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Sion.
Her steps quickened.
Not because she wanted to.
Because her body did.
Because that thing inside her — that torn, badly stitched, still living bond — was pulling her toward him with the force of a broken magnet.
So she walked faster.
Her breath grew short.
Her throat burned.
Her chest tightened like a vice.
She crossed a street without looking, nearly got clipped by a car, the driver swearing through his half-open window — she didn't even hear him.
Her brain heard nothing anymore.
Just him.
The closer she got to Sion's place, the tighter her stomach clenched,
the sweatier her hands became,
the stronger that strange feeling grew — the feeling of someone who had held back too much, for too long, and was about to explode.
Nari slowed when she reached the base of the glass tower where Sion lived.
A tall, sharp, cold tower.
A monument to loneliness.
The bright lobby almost mocked her, lit by a light too white, too clean for the storm she felt about to burst.
She went in.
Her heels thudded dully against the polished marble, each step echoing like one second less before the catastrophe.
The place smelled of black coffee, varnished wood and money — the scent of a powerful, wealthy, solitary man, Sion's presence etched into the walls.
The higher she went, the more her breathing stuttered.
It wasn't fear.
It was truth.
A truth about to blow up in their faces.
She reached the door.
The front door was ajar.
A rough breath escaped her lips.
She stood still for a few seconds, as if to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.
But no.
The door was really open.
Just enough to let in a thin draft of cold air, a current carrying the smell of black coffee and a freshly crushed cigarette.
She felt her heart tighten.
She pushed the door gently with her trembling fingers.
A slow, sinister creak echoed into the silent apartment.