The losses accelerate.
Mira forgets the ending of her favorite book. Then her neighbor's face. Then an entire afternoon vanishes, leaving behind only a sense of having cried.
At the clinic, her supervisor calls her in.
"You've been distracted," he says gently. "Are you all right?"
She lies without thinking. The lie comes easily.
That evening, she finds Hiyoon waiting on the bridge, brighter than she's ever seen him.
"You're stronger," she says.
He looks away. "You're bleeding into me."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I'm borrowing more than time now," he says. "I'm borrowing you."
Fear coils through her—but beneath it, something darker.
Relief.
"If this keeps going," she asks, "what happens?"
Hiyoon meets her gaze. "Eventually, I won't disappear anymore."
"And me?"
He doesn't answer.
The silence is loud enough to be a warning.