chapter 155
Haru drove without really knowing where he was going.
His hands remained firmly wrapped around the steering wheel, but everything else felt strangely distant. The road stretched ahead of him beneath the pale glow of streetlights, Seoul slowly passing by in a blur of glass, concrete, and scattered headlights. He barely registered any of it.
He only knew that he couldn't go back.
Not tonight.
Maybe not for a while.
His chest still ached from everything that had happened, but the pain had begun to settle into something colder. His body felt weak, almost weightless, as though whatever strength had been holding him upright had been drained somewhere between the bedroom and the front door.
He thought about calling Sehee.
The thought came naturally. She was one of the few people he could go to without having to explain every part of himself. He could show up at her door, say nothing, and she would probably understand that something was wrong.
But he dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it came.
He couldn't see her like this.
Not when he was barely holding himself together.
Maybe later, when he wasn't one breath away from collapsing from exhaustion and heartbreak, he could go to her. Right now, he needed somewhere that belonged to no one but him.
Then he remembered the house.
His own house.
It was closer to the agency, something he had continued renting even after his life had gradually shifted almost entirely into Raiven's apartment. At one point, he had barely seen the reason for keeping it. Once he and Raiven had begun living together full-time, the place had become little more than an expensive reminder that he had another option. The only other reason he continued keeping it was in case of suspicion he could easily have a place to cover their tracks.
He had even considered renting it out.
Thank God he never had.
Raiven knew about it, technically. Haru had mentioned it once or twice in passing, probably without giving the matter much thought. But he had never brought Raiven there often enough for the place to become part of their shared life. Raiven didn't know the exact details of it.
Tonight, that small piece of forgotten independence suddenly felt like the only thing he had left.
By the time Haru pulled into the driveway, the sky was still dark.
He turned off the engine and remained inside the car for several minutes, staring through the windshield.
The apartment building looked exactly as he remembered it.
he walked up the stairs. It was.
Quiet.
Dark.
Untouched.
There were no shoes by the entrance. No familiar jacket hanging over a chair. No half-finished drink sitting on the kitchen counter. No evidence that someone else lived there.
For months, he had become accustomed to coming home to Raiven.
Even when things were difficult, even when the apartment felt too quiet, Raiven had been there somewhere within it. Haru had grown used to the small signs of another person existing beside him—the sound of footsteps in another room, the faint music playing from Raiven's phone, the occasional sight of clothes carelessly left somewhere they shouldn't have been.
Here, there was nothing.
Only silence.
Haru eventually stepped into the apartment.
His legs felt unsteady beneath him as he walked forward. He left the light off.
The darkness didn't bother him.
In fact, he preferred it.
He didn't want to see himself.
He didn't want to see the expression on his own face or notice how swollen his eyes were from crying. He didn't want to be reminded of what he looked like when the person he loved had shattered something inside him.
He simply wanted to disappear.
The house smelled faintly of dust and the clean fabric of sheets that had been left untouched for too long. Everything was exactly where he had left it. Nothing had changed.
And somehow that hurt too.
Haru walked toward the bedroom.
He didn't bother changing.
He didn't bother showering.
He barely managed to remove his shoes before collapsing onto the bed.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight.
The sheets were cold.
The coldness seeped through his clothes and settled against his exhausted body, but he didn't move to pull the blanket over himself. He simply lay there on his back, staring at the plain wall across from him.
For a long time, he didn't cry.
He wanted to.
God, he wanted to.
His eyes burned with the effort of holding everything inside, his throat aching with words that had nowhere to go. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sob until there was nothing left inside him. He wanted someone to tell him that he had misunderstood what he had seen.
But no sound came.
His body seemed to have reached its limit.
It was as if even his grief had become too heavy to carry.
His thoughts wandered despite his efforts to stop them.
The bedroom.
Chang-seo.
Raiven's face when he had seen Haru standing in the doorway.
The desperation in his voice.
The way he had tried to explain.
Haru squeezed his eyes shut, but the memories remained.
He opened them again and returned his gaze to the wall.
There was a tiny mark near the corner that he had probably never noticed before.
He stared at it.
Then at the crack beside it.
Then at the faint shadow cast across the ceiling as the first traces of dawn began to creep through the curtains.
He didn't know how long he had been lying there.
Eventually, the darkness outside began to fade.
The black sky became dark blue, then gray, and finally softened into the pale light of morning. The world outside began waking. Somewhere in the distance, a vehicle passed. Birds called from somewhere beyond the house.
Haru remained exactly where he was.
He didn't sleep.
He didn't get up.
He simply lay there, his body growing colder against the mattress, his eyes fixed on the same blank wall.
For once, he didn't want to be an actor.
He didn't want to be someone's boyfriend.
He didn't want to be someone's son, someone's friend, someone's rising star, or the person everyone expected to have everything under control.
He didn't want to answer questions.
He didn't want to explain himself.
He didn't want to hear Raiven's voice.
He didn't want to hear Chang-seo's name.
He just wanted to be alone.
And as the sun finally rose over the city, Haru remained beneath the cold sheets of the house he had almost given away, unaware that the small decision to keep it months ago had just given him somewhere to fall apart.