Mira woke with the echo of counting still in her ears.
"One. Two."
She lay still, staring at the ceiling until the morning light settled into familiar shapes. Her apartment smelled faintly of detergent and rain from the night before. Everything was ordinary. That, somehow, felt wrong.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, searching for the face from the dream.
Nothing.
Only the certainty that she had not been alone.
At the clinic, the day unfolded without drama. A retired teacher grieving misplaced years. A college student afraid her memories were slipping faster than her peers'. Mira listened, guided, reassured. She was practiced at helping people let go of what hurt them.
But every time the bell above the door chimed, her chest tightened.
He did not come.
During a lull, Mira opened her appointment log from the previous day. The final line was blank where a name should have been. Not unusual—walk-ins happened—but the absence bothered her more than it should have.
She closed the book.
That evening, on her walk home, she found herself taking a longer route. The city dimmed into quieter streets, the air thick with the smell of river water and metal.
The bridge rose ahead of her.
She stopped.
She had no reason to be here. No appointment, no habit, no memory attached to this place that should have pulled her feet in this direction.
And yet—
"Dr. Kim."
The voice came softly, from behind her.
Mira turned.
He stood a few steps away, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat as if unsure what to do with them. Up close, the strange thing wasn't that she recognized him.
It was that she felt she had always known him.
Her breath caught. "You."
He smiled faintly, relief flashing across his face before he masked it. "You remember."
"I—" She faltered. The edges of his face blurred when she tried to focus. "I remember that you were in my office."
"That's enough," he said quickly. "For now."
She crossed her arms, grounding herself. "You left before I could ask anything."
"I didn't want to make it worse."
"Worse than forgetting your face?" she asked.
He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."
A silence stretched between them, filled with traffic hum and distant water.
Finally, she asked, "Why are you here?"
He looked at the bridge, not at her. "Because this is where I stay the longest."
Something about the phrasing unsettled her.
Mira took a careful step closer. "What's your name?"
For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer.
Then he said, very softly, "Hiyoon."
The sound settled into her chest like it belonged there.
"Hiyoon," she repeated.
He inhaled sharply, as if the word had weight.
"Please," he said, meeting her eyes at last. "Don't say it too many times."
"Why?"
"Because if you remember me too clearly," he said, voice barely above the wind, "I won't be able to stay."
Mira looked at him—at the man she wasn't supposed to remember, standing solidly in front of her.
"Then," she said, "we should talk before you disappear."
For the first time, he smiled fully.
"That's what I was hoping you'd say."
The lights on the bridge flickered on, one by one.
Neither of them moved.