The change didn't arrive with alarms.
It arrived with space.
Tae-Hyun felt it the moment he stepped out of his room.
The corridor looked the same. The light held the same soft tone. The air carried the same controlled stillness.
But something in the inner wing had been… stretched.
The quiet no longer felt shared.
It felt measured.
A technician waited near the junction ahead. Gray coat. Neutral face. Tablet held a little too ready.
"Han Jae-Min," he said. "Your route has been updated."
A new path illuminated on the floor.
It curved away from the residential sector.
Away from the central chambers.
Away from her.
Tae-Hyun didn't move.
"What about Subject E-17?" he asked.
The technician's gaze flicked briefly to the tablet. "Her schedule has also been updated."
"To where?"
"Opposite sector."
The words landed gently.
That was how this place always did it.
No force.
Only placement.
Eun-chae felt it too.
She was already awake when they came for her.
She had been standing near the inner wall of her room, palm resting against the cool surface, following a sensation she couldn't quite name. The hum inside her had thinned overnight, losing the quiet warmth it had carried since Tae-Hyun had been moved beside her.
When the door opened, she turned.
Two technicians stood there.
"Subject E-17," one said. "You'll be relocated temporarily."
"Where?" she asked.
"Upper research wing."
Her fingers curled slowly.
"That's not my assigned sector."
"It is now."
She took one last look at the room before stepping out.
The corridor felt longer than it had the night before.
And emptier.
They saw each other only once.
At a junction where two curved passageways crossed, separated by a transparent partition and a soft line of embedded light that neither had been meant to cross.
Tae-Hyun was walking with a technician on either side.
So was she.
Their steps slowed at the same time.
Not because anyone told them to.
Because something in them recognized absence the way the body recognizes a drop in temperature.
Eun-chae stopped.
So did Tae-Hyun.
The technicians hesitated, uncertain for half a second before protocol reasserted itself.
"Please continue moving," one said.
But neither of them did.
They stood there, separated by less than three meters of engineered floor and a rule that had never existed before today.
Her face looked paler.
His jaw was set in a way she had never seen.
The hum inside him stirred and found nothing to settle into.
Inside her, the quiet felt too wide.
"They've started," she said softly.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"They didn't say."
Her gaze searched his.
Not for data.
For grounding.
"I can't feel you," she said.
The words were not an accusation.
They were a revelation.
His chest tightened.
"I'm still here," he said.
"I know," she replied. "But the space between isn't empty anymore."
Something flickered in her expression.
Not fear.
Something closer to loss.
"Subject E-17," the technician said, firmer now.
Eun-chae inhaled.
Then lifted her hand.
She didn't reach for the partition.
She held it over her heart.
Tae-Hyun mirrored the motion without thinking.
For a brief second, the hum responded.
Weakly.
Like a distant echo in a hollow room.
Her lips curved faintly.
"They don't know how much distance is enough," she said.
"No," he replied. "Only how much they can impose."
The technicians stepped forward.
Time closed around the moment.
Eun-chae lowered her hand.
"Don't let them turn silence into proof," she said.
He held her gaze.
"I won't," he said. "And you won't let them make you forget how this felt."
"I won't," she promised.
They were guided away.
Opposite directions.
The partition remained.
The corridor lights adjusted.
And W-03 recorded the event as Distance Protocol: Phase One.
The effects came quickly.
In Tae-Hyun, the hum grew restless. Its internal order loosened, no longer finding the easy coherence that had shaped itself around her presence. He felt sharper. Colder. More aware of the building, of the layered systems threading through it, of the countless biological signatures moving in distant wings.
The structure listened to him again.
It hadn't needed to, when she was near.
In Eun-chae, the world became louder.
The inner wing's faint harmonics pressed more insistently against her awareness. Her thoughts no longer settled easily. Her nervous system worked harder to hold patterns that had once balanced themselves.
She noticed every system shift.
Every light change.
Every breath.
And in the absence of him, something inside her began compensating.
Adapting.
The way all living things did.
By the end of the day, Director Han stood before a wall of layered projections, hands resting lightly behind his back.
"Distance has destabilized the shared field," one analyst said.
"But individual responsiveness has increased," another added.
"Especially hers," a third murmured.
Director Han watched the streams in silence.
"And him?" he asked.
"He's no longer diffusing the architecture," the first replied. "His influence has become… directional."
The director's gaze sharpened.
"That may be more useful," he said quietly.
That night, alone in his quarters, Tae-Hyun sat on the edge of his bed and closed his eyes.
He reached inward.
The hum responded immediately, spreading through his awareness, uncontained now, unanchored.
And for the first time since his rebirth, he did not direct it outward toward a system.
He directed it toward absence.
Toward the faintest imprint of a presence that was no longer within reach.
Somewhere across W-03, Eun-chae stood at the glass of her new sector, eyes closed, breathing slow, trying to remember the internal quiet that had existed when he had been close.
Neither of them knew it yet.
But Distance Protocol had not begun testing the system.
It had begun testing them.