The funeral smelled like lilies and rain. Ara hated both now.
Everyone was dressed in black, whispering the same empty phrases. "Such a good boy." "Too young." "Life is unfair." Their voices blurred into a dull hum in her ears.
Ara stood at the back of the hall, fingers locked around the strap of her bag, eyes fixed on the framed photo at the front. Jaemin's smile was frozen there, bright and alive, as if he might step out of the picture any second and tease her again.
But he wouldn't.
Because the numbers had reached zero.
Her mind replayed the scene again and again: the countdown above his head, the blinding headlights, the way 00:00:00 flashed and then disappeared as his body crumpled.
Only she had seen it.
"Ara."
She turned. Jaemin's mother stood beside her, eyes swollen, cheeks blotchy from crying. Her hands trembled as she reached out.
"You were with him at the end," the woman whispered. "Thank you… for staying. He must have been scared."
Ara's throat closed.
Scared?
He had been smiling. Right before the car hit him, he had turned back to wave at her. He had no idea he was going to die.
She did.
Or at least, she should have.
"I'm sorry," Ara managed, voice raw. "I… should have stopped him."
"No." Jaemin's mother shook her head fiercely, gripping Ara's hands. "It was an accident. No one could have known."
But Ara had known something was wrong. She had seen those numbers counting down toward nothing.
If she had screamed sooner. If she had grabbed him harder. If she hadn't fallen in love at all—
The thought made her dizzy.
Outside, the sky was the same washed-out gray as that day. When Ara stepped out of the funeral hall, the wind cut through her black dress, and the lingering smell of incense clung to her hair.
She walked to the edge of the road in front of the building and stopped.
Cars rolled by, tires hissing on wet asphalt. People crossed when the light turned green, oblivious.
Ara stared at the spot that looked just like every other patch of street.
"Jaemin," she whispered. "If I hadn't liked you… would you still be alive?"
The question hung in the air, swallowed by the sounds of traffic.
That night, in her dark bedroom, Ara lay on her side, facing the wall. Her phone buzzed again and again—messages from classmates, teachers, relatives. She didn't answer any of them.
Instead, she pressed her fingers against her chest and listened to her own heartbeat.
When had the numbers appeared?
Not when she first met him. Not when they started hanging out.
They appeared the moment she admitted it: I like him.
The moment that warm, fluttery feeling turned real, the timer started.
"What are you trying to tell me?" she whispered into the darkness. "Is it my fault?"
The room stayed silent.
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to the faint reflection of herself in the window.
There were no numbers above her own head.
There never had been.
There were only numbers on the people she loved. Her mother. Her father. Her grandmother. Her childhood best friend.
And Jaemin.
No strangers. No classmates she didn't care about. No teachers.
Only the ones inside her heart.
"If I hadn't loved him," she said, each word scraping her throat, "would those numbers have appeared?"
There was no answer.
So she made one herself.
"I won't love anyone again," Ara whispered, voice shaking but stubborn. "Ever."
Her heart thudded, as if in protest.
She ignored it.
"If I don't love them, I won't see their time," she continued. "If I don't see their time, they won't die because of me."
It was a stupid chain of logic, fragile and desperate. But it was all she had.
"If I don't love, they live," she repeated, over and over, until the words turned from a thought into a rule.
A rule carved deep into her bones.
Days turned into weeks. The whispers at school faded. The flowers on Jaemin's old desk wilted and disappeared. Someone else took his seat.
Life went on.
Ara shrank her world to something she could control: home, school, her room.
At home, she checked her parents without thinking. Her mother's timer floated above her head when she cooked. Years and days. Too big a number to fully process.
Her father's timer ticked along as he watched TV, grumbled about work, asked if she'd eaten.
The glow of those numbers hurt her eyes.
"Are you okay, Ara?" her mother asked one night, reaching out to smooth a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm fine," Ara lied.
She was not fine. She was terrified.
Terrified that if she loved them even a little more, if her heart slipped for even a second, something terrible would happen again.
So she held everything tightly inside.
She stopped getting close to new classmates. Stopped joining clubs. Stopped entertaining crushes.
"If I don't love, they live," she told herself every time someone's kindness made her chest ache. Every time a small warmth tried to creep in. She smothered it.
By her third year of high school, Han Ara was the quiet girl by the window. Polite, distant, hard to approach.
Safe.
At least, that was what she thought.
Until the day a transfer student walked into her classroom with rain in his hair and nothing above his head at all.