You sweep the floors with your hair tied up in a red ribbon, humming songs no one else seems to know. You boil water in the back room, your sleeves rolled up past your elbows, wrists red from the heat. Sometimes you lean out the window to shake out a cloth, and Mingyu watches from across the street, heart in his throat, as if looking at you might somehow unmake the curse.

It doesn’t.

The Fifth King’s words still echo like older thunder in his ears. One lifetime for every sin, the king had said. He doesn’t remember what he did to deserve this; only that it was enough to curse him with memory, and longing, and you.

You, who never remembers him. You, who are always just out of reach.

Still, this life feels different. He’s not a lonely musician. He’s just Mingyu. Just a man in a wool coat with frayed sleeves and too many lifetimes folded into the lines around his eyes.

Somehow, that compels him to step inside.

The bell above the teahouse door is delicate and cracked, like it’s been broken and glued back together a dozen times. It tinkles faintly as he enters, and you glance up from behind the counter. He orders ginger tea. It’s too hot, a little bitter. He drinks it anyway.

You don’t say much to him at first, just slide the cup forward with a polite nod, fingers dusted with flour, and return to kneading dough in the back. Mingyu sits in the corner, watching steam curl from the rim of his cup, pretending to read a book he’s read a thousand times before.

He returns the next day. And the next.

Sometimes you smile at him. Sometimes you ask if he wants something sweet with his tea. He always says yes, just to hear your voice again.

“Do you work nearby?” you ask one morning, wiping your hands on your apron.

“No,” he says. “I walk a lot.”

You tilt your head. “Even in the snow?”

“Especially then,” he says, and you laugh. The sound cuts through every century he’s lived without you. It makes something ancient in him ache.

You tell him your name one day. He already knows it, of course, but he pretends it’s the first time. He says it softly, rolls it on his tongue like a promise.

He brings small things sometimes: a book of poems; a silk ribbon the same colour as the one you wear; once, a tiny jade rabbit charm that he leaves near the register when you’re not looking. You find it later and keep it in your purse. You never ask if it’s from him, and he never tells you.

Some days, he helps. He carries water from the well; repairs a broken chair leg; teaches you how to fold paper cranes when the shop is slow. You sit across from him at the low table, your hands awkward at first, and he watches you fold the wings silently.

You crease the edge of the paper with your thumbnail, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. Mingyu doesn’t laugh, though the sight of you furrowing your brow over something as simple as a paper crane is enough to pull a smile to his mouth. He leans forward and gently adjusts the angle of the folded wing.

“Like this,” he says quietly.

Your fingers brush, briefly, barely. It’s nothing—but to him, it’s everything.

After that, you start leaving out an extra cup when you brew tea in the morning, even before he walks in. He tells you that he prefers ginger tea with honey, that he likes his bread warm and his jam unsweetened. Sometimes he hums under his breath when he reads, even though his eyes don’t always move across the page.

He learns that you braid your hair when you’re nervous, and that you’re saving up for a trip to Busan, and that you talk to the teapot when you think no one’s listening.

Sometimes, when it snows harder than usual, you don’t get any customers and the city stays quiet. On those days, you sit across from each other on the heated floorboards, sipping tea and listening to the wind rattle the windows.

Once, you fall asleep like that—cheek pressed to your folded arms, exhaustion shuttering your eyelids. Mingyu doesn’t wake you. He watches the snow gather on the windowsill and thinks about how peaceful your face looks in this life. 

He wonders if this is enough. If friendship is enough.

You wake, embarrassed, and he just smiles and tells you to rest more. You blink at him, still sleepy but shake your head, so he asks if you want to learn how to fold a lotus next. You do.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

It’s your honeymoon. At least, that’s what the world thinks.

The hotel is charming in the way French hotels are supposed to be—wrought-iron balconies, velvet drapes, and wallpaper the colour of old pearls. The floorboards creak under his feet, and the hallways smell faintly of orange blossoms and candlewax.

Below, the Seine coils through the city, meandering long and slow. Gondoliers shout in lilting voices from the water. The bouquinistes have already opened their green boxes along the banks, selling secondhand poetry and crumbling maps to tourists who still believe Paris belongs to lovers.

Maybe it does. Just not to the two of you.

Mingyu stands by the window, shirt half-buttoned, tie discarded somewhere near the settee. The silk catches on the carved wooden leg. The breeze lifts the edge of the curtain, letting in the sound of clattering dishes from the café downstairs.

The light falls soft on your face where you sit at the vanity, brushing your hair in long, even strokes, the red ribbon that you’d used to tie your hair back wrapped around your wrist. Your nightgown is lace-trimmed and far too sheer for the cool morning. He thinks it must be uncomfortable, but you wear it anyway, spine straight, chin lifted, always composed. You don’t look at him. You haven’t looked at him all morning.

There are two coffee cups on the table. One is untouched. You didn’t like the roast, but you won’t tell him that. You’ll let it sit there and grow cold because indifference is your sharpest weapon, and you know exactly how to wield it.

The lace shifts again as you move, bare shoulders catching the gold light. It’s almost enough to make him forget; almost enough to believe this life could be different. Maybe, if he just reached out—if he touched your shoulder, softly, just once—you’d remember something. The way your fingers once curled around the fabric of his hanbok, or the way you said his name.

It’s your honeymoon, and you can barely stand to be in the same room.

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE WEEK AGO.

Mingyu promises to take you to see the cherry blossoms after work.

You’re half-asleep on the sofa when he tells you, legs tucked beneath you, your blouse rumpled and your slacks creased at the knees. Your fingers are curled around a mug of ginger tea you’ve forgotten to sip from, the steam long faded. The apartment glows in the evening light—low and golden, brushing everything it touches with warmth. It rests on your cheek, your collarbone, the line of your neck.

The window is cracked open just enough for the air to carry the sound of birds and distant footsteps. Someone laughs downstairs—the neighbour’s kid, maybe, or a passing couple. In the kitchen, the rice cooker clicks off with a soft chime, and the smell of jasmine rice begins to mingle with the faint perfume of laundry soap and honey.

The sakura have started blooming early this year, soft clouds of pink dusting every street, like the city’s been dipped in blush and left to dry slowly. He noticed them that morning on his walk to the train: the way petals clung to the sidewalk like confetti, the way one landed on the shoulder of your coat and you didn’t notice.

“Don’t forget,” you mumble without opening your eyes, voice warm and worn out, lips brushing the rim of the mug. Your feet are bare, and you wiggle your toes sleepily when he sits beside you.

“I won’t,” Mingyu says, and he means it.

He never forgets, not in this life.

He reaches over and gently lifts the mug from your hands, careful not to spill it, and sets it on the coffee table beside your phone and a half-finished crossword. Your handwriting is in blue pen—curvy, a little impatient. He glances at it, then turns his attention back to you.

“You should change out of your work clothes,” he says.

“M’comfy,” you whisper, not moving an inch.

He laughs softly. “You say that. Then you complain about the wrinkles in the morning.”

You hum noncommittally, already slipping towards sleep. Your head tilts until it rests against his shoulder. He shifts a little to make it easier. Your hair smells like lemongrass shampoo and the rose spray you use in early spring. Mingyu leans his cheek gently against the top of your head.

“Are we going tomorrow or Saturday?” you ask.

“Tomorrow,” Mingyu says. “I want to go before the crowds come.”

“You hate crowds,” you agree, nodding.

“You hate them more.”

You smile. “Smart man.”

Mingyu slides his arm behind your back, warm and solid and steady. He closes his eyes and listens—to your breath, to the tick of the clock on the wall.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. EARLY SUMMER, 1972.

Mingyu slings his arm over your bare waist, and thinks that this might be the life.

Maybe the Fifth King took pity on him. Maybe this is a loophole, and it comes with jazz and heat and the way your lipstick smeared against his collar an hour ago. Maybe it’s not a trick. Maybe, for once, he gets to stay.

Your breath is steady now, but your skin is still flushed, slick with the last traces of sweat. The cotton sheets stick to your thigh where it’s thrown over his hip, and your fingers twitch against his ribs, still restless in sleep.

He lets his hand drift up the slope of your side, slow and gentle. He watches your lashes flutter, the corner of your mouth twitch as you stir.

“Are you awake?” he asks.

You hum without opening your eyes. “Barely.”

He presses a kiss behind your ear. “Should I stop?”

“If you’re asking that, you already know the answer.”

So Mingyu doesn’t stop. His hand moves, slow and familiar now, tracing the curve of your hip. You shift closer, still half-asleep, until your leg slides between his and your mouth brushes against the underside of his jaw.

It’s easy like this. Too easy.

Your bodies know each other even if your minds don’t. There’s no fumbling anymore, no pretending. Just heat and breath and the memory of his name whispered into the crook of his neck, again and again, like you’re trying to brand yourself into him. Maybe you are.

He holds you afterward, and listens to the rain starting up again outside the window—soft at first, then steadier. Jazz spills in from the bar two floors down, muffled by distance and glass, but still there. Like everything in this city, it lingers.

“You’re staring,” you say eventually, not unkindly.

“I do that,” Mingyu says.

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

You make a soft sound in the back of your throat, somewhere between amusement and disbelief, and burrow deeper into his chest. Your fingers trace a line over his collarbone, idle and absentminded, like you’re not really thinking about what you’re doing.

“You always act like you know something I don’t,” you mumble. “Like you’ve been waiting for me to figure it out.”

Mingyu swallows. “Figure out what?”

“Whatever it is you keep hiding behind your eyes,” you say. “You always look so sad, Mingyu.”

His arm tightens around you just slightly. 

You’re not wrong. You never are, not in any life. Even without memory, your intuition is as sharp as it’s always been. You’re like a compass that always swings toward the truth, even when the truth is something you have no idea about. 

Mingyu considers lying, or laughing it off. But you shift again, and your thigh brushes against his. You’re close—so close, close enough that he almost lets the truth slip past his teeth. You’ve died in my arms before. You’ve looked at me with your last breath. I’ve been cursed to find you again and again and again.

Instead, he says, “Maybe I just like the way you look when you sleep.”

“Poetic.”

“I try.”

You lift your head to look at him. There’s mascara smudged beneath your eyes, and a tiny crease on your cheek where it pressed against the pillow. Your mouth is a little swollen from kissing, and your voice is hoarse in the way that drives him insane.

“You know this isn’t forever, right?” you say, softly, like you’re offering him a kindness by saying it first.

“I know,” Mingyu says.

You nod, like that’s what you needed to hear. “Good.”

But you don’t move. You don’t pull away. You rest your chin on his chest and look at him like you’re memorising the shape of his nose and the colour of his eyes.

“God,” you whisper after a while. “This would be so much easier if you were an asshole.”

Mingyu laughs and says, “I can be, if it helps.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “You’re good. That’s the problem.”

He kisses your forehead and tries not to think about the way your voice cracked.

JOSEON, KOREA. WINTER, 1798.

It is snowing the first time Mingyu sees you, and your name forms on his mouth like habit.

It’s not the name you carry now—not the one assigned to you by court records and a royal appointment, or the one embroidered into the hem of your hanbok in gold thread. It is the name you’ve had in your previous lifetime. The name he’s whispered into your skin, into your dying hands.

Mingyu doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t dare.

He watches you from the far side of the courtyard, where the snow has muffled the world and the stone paths disappear beneath white. His breath fogs in the air. A court servant speaks beside him—something about a grain levy in Jeolla—but Mingyu isn’t listening. He couldn’t, even if he tried.

You walk gracefully, holding a lacquered tray to your chest, with your back straight. Your hair is pulled into a sleek bun, adorned with a single ornamental binyeo shaped like a plum blossom. It is the sign of a new concubine: favoured and untouched. The wind catches your sleeve and flutters it gently, and his chest clenches at the sight of your wrist. A thousand memories flicker through his mind like reeds in the current.

Yet, your face is unfamiliar in this first life. Younger, and softer. Your eyes don’t carry memory. You don’t look at him with recognition or contempt. You don’t look at him at all.

You pass through the courtyard, and Mingyu stands frozen under the shadow of a ginkgo tree, as though time itself has collapsed.

Later, in his private study, he asks about you. He pretends it’s nothing—an idle inquiry wrapped in courtesy, spoken to the right eunuch over warm rice wine.

“The girl who came last month,” he says, carefully. “The concubine gifted by the Governor of Gangwon. What do we know of her?”

“The new Lady?” The eunuch says your new name, the one that doesn’t feel right in Mingyu’s mouth. “She is quiet and well-mannered. Literate, I believe, though she comes from no family of rank. She entered the palace under the northern court’s petition—her village suffered a flood, and her people sought mercy. The Governor offered her as tribute.”

“Tribute,” Mingyu repeats, tasting the word like ash.

“She was chosen for her beauty,” the eunuch adds. “Nothing more.”

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

You married him because you had to.

It was a bargain struck behind closed doors, a compromise made with fathers and fortunes and convenience. He had wealth, and you had a family in debt. It was all very civilised, very French. The papers printed your photograph beside a headline that called it a union of elegance and fortune. They didn’t print the part where you refused to meet his eyes.

At dinner, you speak to him in French, formally, like a woman who doesn’t wish to be misunderstood, and doesn’t care to be known. You order for yourself. You never ask if he’s read the books you quote. You let the silence stretch until it breaks and sip your half-finished wine instead.

Mingyu lets you. He nods when appropriate, smiles when it seems polite, swirls his wine, and pretends not to watch the way you cut your food too carefully.

He thinks about how different your voice sounds in this life. How your laughter is a stranger to him. He remembers the you who laughed easily, the you who danced barefoot in the snow, the you who wrote him letters in the margins of books and left pressed flowers between the pages. That version of you isn’t here.

In this lifetime, you wear gloves to dinner and never once let your fingers brush his.

But you’re beautiful. God, you’re beautiful.

It kills him a little, every time.

You look like a painting he’s seen before and can’t quite place; one he’s spent lifetimes trying to find again. Now that you’re here—flesh and blood, name and ring and contract—you’re more unreachable than ever.

You don’t sleep in the same bed. The suite has two, and that’s something you requested specifically. He remembers the clerk glancing at him with a look that hovered between pity and apology.

The bellboy had asked, “Madame, shall I draw the curtains between the beds?”

“Yes, thank you,” you had said.

You don’t ask him questions: not about his work, not about his past. Not about the faraway look he sometimes gets when the light hits the Seine just right. He doesn’t ask you, either. The truth is, you are not his, in this life.

He wonders if you dream of him. He wonders if somewhere deep in your chest, beneath the silk and bone and flesh, something stirs when he says your name. He wonders if you ever wake in the middle of the night with a pang in your heart that you don’t understand.

Mingyu hopes so, because he has woken up like that every night of this life.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA. WINTER, 1937.

By the time Seollal passes and the paper lanterns are taken down, the people in the neighbourhood begin to notice—not with suspicion or idle gossip, but with a kind of slow, blooming fondness. They don’t whisper behind their hands or snicker when Mingyu walks by. Instead, they smile.

The old woman with the parrot—Madam Kwon, who lives above the fermented soybean shop—starts referring to Mingyu as your shadow. Every morning, as she feeds her bird sesame seeds and counts her prayer beads in the sun, she croaks out, “Your shadow’s early today,” when Mingyu turns the corner near the tea shop. The parrot repeats her, mangled and gleeful. Sha-dow, sha-dow!

You glance up from the window, smothering a smile.

The boy from across the alley, barely thirteen, who runs errands for the ink shop, has started tipping his cap at Mingyu each morning. One day, when he passes, he calls out with the overconfidence of youth, “She likes persimmons, you know. Bring her some. The kind with the wrinkly skins.”

Mingyu hides his amusement behind a polite nod. The next day, a small cloth pouch of dried persimmons appears on the tea shop counter. You don’t say anything, just tuck them into the cupboard—but you save one, and when Mingyu comes in at closing, you place it on a small plate beside his tea without a word.

The grocer, Mr. Baek, an older man with a permanent frown and a weak knee, lets Mingyu pick through the fresh vegetables first whenever he sees him on the path to the tea shop.

“You work too hard, boy,” Mr. Baek grumbles as Mingyu hoists a basket of firewood onto one shoulder.

“He’s not a boy,” Madam Kwon snorts from her usual perch. “He’s a man, Baek. Can’t you tell?”

“A man, huh?” Mr. Baek eyes Mingyu’s hands, callused from helping with the heavy work around the shop. “Well, even a man needs to rest his back before it breaks.”

Mingyu only smiles. “I’ll rest after I’ve swept the steps for her.”

They all approve of him, though none say it directly. The world is starting to tuck Mingyu into your corner of it without him needing to ask.

One afternoon, while the snow still clings to the gutters but the breeze carries a hint of plum blossoms, an elderly couple walks in from out of town. They speak in slow dialect, asking for ginger tea and warmth for their aching bones. Mingyu is seated by the window, sketching quietly in his notebook. As you prepare the tea, the woman glances at him, then at you.

“Your husband doesn’t say much,” she remarks.

You nearly spill the water. “He’s not— I mean, we’re not—”

Mingyu looks up, and the couple laughs kindly. “Ah, forgive us,” the man says. “You have that look about you.”

“What look?” you ask, wary.

“The look of people whose silence with each other is comfortable.”

You don’t respond, but when you set the tray down in front of them, you notice Mingyu watching you closely. After they leave, you go to clear the table. There’s an extra coin left on the tray, and the old woman has pressed a paper fortune beside it: “Love that arrives quietly stays the longest.”

You crumple it. But later that night, after the shop has closed and the windows are shuttered, Mingyu finds it smoothed out on the back counter, your handwriting scribbled in the margins: “Don’t get any ideas.”

He smiles.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1971.

Mingyu finds you by accident, really. 

He’s searching for a bar—any bar—on an unnaturally rainy Friday night, his collar turned up against the warm drizzle, the air thick with the smell of sweet olive trees and fried catfish. The city hums with life even in the storm. Neon flickers on puddles like oil slicks, and brass spills from half-opened windows.

He’s already passed three places too crowded, one too quiet, and a fourth that reeked of stale beer and cigarette ash, when he turns down a narrow side street he doesn’t remember the name of.

He finds a wooden door, warped with time and painted a moody red. It sits beneath a hanging sign with chipped cursive that reads: The Red Ribbon. A string of paper lanterns hangs overhead, glowing soft through the rain like a trail of fireflies.

Inside, the bar is low-lit and warm, a haven from the storm. The air smells like cinnamon smoke and lemon rinds, and something old—like velvet curtains and perfume that clings to skin. There’s a quiet hum of conversation, the clink of glass on glass, and music.

No—not music. A voice.

Low and rich, not quite singing, not quite speaking. Like honey melting in a warm cup of tea, it curls around the room before he sees you; dips into the cracks between shadows; holds him still.

You’re on stage, beneath a gold spotlight, wearing a black satin blouse tucked into high-waisted pants, one heel perched on the edge of the stool as you croon into the microphone. Your voice doesn’t beg for attention. It commands it, slow and sultry and effortless. You sing a cover of I’ll Be Seeing You, but it’s yours now, softer, smokier, as if the song’s always belonged to you.

In your hair, tied just above your ear, is a red ribbon.

Mingyu stops breathing.

You’re older in this life. Sharper. Your voice curls like cigarette smoke, and your smile doesn’t reach your eyes. But it’s you. Of course it’s you. He would know you in any century.

You don’t see him. You never do, not at first.

The room fades. Mingyu’s heart hammers.

The Fifth King’s curse, so old now it’s half-forgotten, curls tight in his ribs like a warning. This is the fourth time, he thinks.

The bartender is young, with freckles scattered across his nose. “What can I get you?”

“What’s her drink?” Mingyu asks, nodding toward the stage.

“She switches it up sometimes. But mostly it’s gin and tonic. Extra lime.”

“Then one of those. And whatever you recommend.”

He carries both your drinks over when you step off the stage, undoing the ribbon in your hair deftly and shaking your head. You wrap the ribbon around your wrist and raise an eyebrow when he stops by your table. 

“That for me?” you ask.

Mingyu sets the gin and tonic down. “Extra lime.”

“Let me guess,” you drawl. “First time here, heard me sing, got curious?”

“Something like that,” he says.

JOSEON, KOREA. SPRING, 1799.

It is well past curfew when you slip into the old library pavilion.

The moon is high, its light diffused through the paper lattice windows, casting soft patterns on the wooden floor. The scent of old parchment and ink wafts through the air. Outside, the plum trees stir in the breeze, petals tumbling like tiny, perfumed ghosts.

You shouldn’t be here. No one comes here anymore—not since the roof began to rot, not since the scrolls were moved to the new annex.

But you know the door that creaks just slightly less. You know which floorboards to avoid. Most importantly, you know no one will be looking for a concubine in the archive of forgotten histories.

You light a single oil lamp and walk the aisles barefoot, your skirts brushing against shelves of neglected poetry and old Confucian texts. You’re looking for something. You don’t know what; only that your chest has been heavy lately with something unnamed, and that reading makes it easier to breathe.

You’re so engrossed in a worn volume of Tang poetry that you don’t hear him until it’s too late.

“What are you doing here?”

You whip around, heart slamming in your chest, the book nearly slipping from your fingers. 

Mingyu stands in the doorway—half-lit by moonlight, half-shadowed, like something conjured from the very pages you were reading. He’s shed his ceremonial robes for the evening, wearing only a dark overcoat tied loosely at the waist. His hair is unbound at the nape, a sign that he, too, thought the night would pass without interruption.

You gasp. “I—I didn’t think anyone—”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, though there’s no bite to it. Just curiosity, and a hint of wariness.

You lift your chin. “Neither are you.”

He arches a brow, and you realise your mistake. Of course he’s allowed anywhere he wishes—he’s one of the King’s closest ministers. But instead of correcting you, he steps further inside, eyes never leaving yours.

“What are you reading?”

“Poetry,” you say.

“May I see it?”

You hand him the book with reluctant fingers. He takes it carefully, as though it’s precious. You watch as he scans the open page. His lips move as he reads silently. Then, softly, aloud:

“At the foot of my bed, moonlight Yes, I suppose there is frost on the ground. Lifting my head I gaze at the bright moon Bowing my head, thinking of home.”

You say nothing.

“You miss it,” Mingyu says quietly. “Your home.”

“You can’t miss what you barely remember,” you say, shrugging.

“Still, you’re here,” he says, closing the book. “Risking punishment for poetry.”

“I thought this place was empty.”

“It is. Mostly. You’ve been here before,” he says.

“Will you report me?” you ask, finally meeting his eyes.

He watches you for a long moment, and shakes his head. “No. But if you’re going to read by lamplight, you shouldn’t sit so close to the paper screens. It casts a shadow.”

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE MONTH AGO.

On Mingyu’s birthday, you surprise him with a picnic beneath the sakura.

It’s a Monday, technically a workday, but you convince his supervisor to let him off early and drag him, half-confused, half-laughing, onto the Marunouchi Line. You refuse to say where you’re going, only grin over the rim of your coffee and tap your knee against his like you’re buzzing with a secret.

He figures it out by the time you’re walking down the path at Shinjuku Gyoen, past couples and families and students with cameras, every tree dripping in soft pink petals. The wind is light, enough to lift your hair and scatter a few blossoms onto his shoulder. You swipe them off with a delicate touch, fingers brushing his collar.

“Here?” he asks, looking around.

You point to a quiet spot beneath a tall cherry tree, where the ground is dappled with sunlight and pink. “Here.”

He watches you set the blanket down and unroll the bento boxes you packed that morning, tied in checkered cloth, still warm. Tamagoyaki, onigiri, simmered daikon, the pickled things he likes. There’s even a small chocolate cake hidden in your tote, which you keep sneakily tucked behind your legs like it isn’t obvious.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” he says, sitting beside you. His voice is warm. He never quite knows what to do with being loved like this—not when it’s freely given.

“I know,” you say. “But I wanted to.”

Mingyu looks at you for a long second. You’re wearing that soft blue sweater he likes, the one that slides off your shoulder when you’re not paying attention. The sunlight hits your cheekbones and catches in your lashes, and he thinks—like he always does—that you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

You open a thermos, pour him tea, and he raises it in mock solemnity.

“To twenty-eight,” he says.

“Twenty-nine,” you correct.

“Am I?”

“You always forget,” you say. “You’ve been forgetting since we met.”

He laughs. “Feels like I’ve lived a hundred years already.”

You don’t say anything. Sometimes, when the light hits his face just right or he says something that echoes in your mind, you wonder.

You’ve always had strange dreams: places you’ve never been, languages you’ve never studied, and a man who always looks like him, even when he wears a robe, or a bloodied uniform, or a wool coat in the snow. You never tell him this. You’re afraid it will break the spell.

Instead, you offer him another onigiri and press a kiss to his cheek.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper. “I’m glad you were born.”

Mingyu closes his eyes and laces his fingers with yours, lets you lean your weight into his side; lets the breeze scatter petals in your hair; lets the warmth spread down his spine like he’s standing in the sun after a long, long winter.

MANCHURIA. WINTER, 1944.

It comes as no surprise, then, that when the war begins, you and Mingyu get married and business at the teahouse dwindles with every passing day.

The papers are signed quietly one late afternoon, in the cramped back office of the local administration hall: two names written in black ink, side by side, binding you together not by love but by survival. There is no time for anything else. The world is already falling apart.

The Japanese occupation deepens its grip. All around you, men vanish into forced conscription, women into labour camps, into silence. The air grows tighter with fear. Propaganda posters replace the poetry on the streets. The teahouse shutters for good.

You and Mingyu are sent away within the month. He becomes a soldier. You become a nurse.

You are not the only married couple split between posts, but somehow, impossibly, the army places you both near the front. You meet sometimes between camps. Once every few weeks, maybe. Sometimes longer.

Each time, your reunion is brief and practical. You sew up the tears in his uniform. He shares what little rations he’s stashed away for you. He never forgets to hand you a pair of gloves or wrap your scarf tighter, or tie your hair back with that red ribbon with shaking fingers. You always insist he sleep for at least two hours before returning to his unit.

There is no time for affection. There is barely time for sleep.

But sometimes, when you are alone—when the tents are quiet and the snow piles against the canvas—he touches your face in the dark, and you lean into him without a word. Sometimes you rest your forehead against his shoulder, and Mingyu runs his hand up and down your back.

The night you die, it is snowing.

The war has reached a new fever. There are no longer clear lines, no longer rest stations or warning signals or predictable patrols. The world is burning in patches, and no one can remember what day it is.

Mingyu is stationed near the ravine when the call comes—medics down, supplies hit, critical injuries. He runs before they finish speaking.

He doesn’t recognise the wreckage of the medic tent at first, just the shape of it, torn open by gunfire and winter wind, canvas flapping in the air. The snow is tinged red. Bodies are scattered everywhere.

You’re still alive when he finds you, but barely.

You’re half-buried beneath another nurse, shielding her even in unconsciousness. Your side is soaked through with blood, spreading dark and fast across your uniform. Your breathing is shallow, more rasp than breath. Mingyu drops to his knees beside you.

“Hey,” he says, voice breaking. “Hey—look at me. It’s me.”

Your eyes flutter open. Focus. Unfocus. Finally, they find him. “...Mingyu?” you breathe, your voice thready.

He laughs, because it’s either that or scream. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. You stubborn woman, what were you doing here? You were supposed to be safe.”

“I stayed.” You cough, wet and small. “One of the children… the boy with the bad leg…”

“I know,” Mingyu says. He does know. He always knew you’d stay. He presses his hand to your wound. His other hand cradles the back of your head. Snowflakes melt on your cheeks.

Later, they find him still holding you, long after the snow has buried your boots and the blood has dried stiff on his uniform. He won’t speak for days, won’t eat. When he finally returns to his post, he doesn’t say what happened; he only writes your name on the inside of his sleeve in black ink, where no one else can see.

Years later, when the war ends and the country forgets the names of its dead, Mingyu does not. He leaves a folded paper crane at every teahouse he passes, and he never remarries.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

On the third day of your honeymoon, Mingyu takes you dancing.

It is a Friday evening, and the city glows with the kind of gold that never quite fades, even as dusk creeps in. From the hotel balcony, the streets below shimmer with laughter, carriage wheels clattering against cobblestones, parasols twirling, violins warming up in salons beyond shuttered windows.

He waits for you in the sitting room, dressed in pressed trousers and a charcoal waistcoat, a pale lavender cravat at his throat—the one you picked, absentmindedly, on your first day in the city. The silk still smells faintly like you.

You emerge from the bedroom without a word, gloves drawn tight over your wrists, gown cinched neatly at the waist. You’re beautiful, but distant.

Always, always distant.

“Shall we?” he asks, offering his arm.

The carriage ride is quiet. The air smells like summer rain and perfume, and Mingyu watches your profile in the glass—the slope of your nose, the way your eyes follow the shape of the Seine like it’s memory. You haven’t touched him since the day you arrived. Your hand rests lightly on his arm now, like you’re afraid even weight might give too much away.

He wants to ask about the letters.

The ones you receive from a different postbox. The ones you tuck away before he enters the room. He’s never opened one, but he doesn’t need to. The handwriting is always the same: slanted, and familiar only to you. He doesn’t ask. He never does.

Tonight, he only wants to pretend.

The ballroom is in Montmartre, crowded and warm, lit by chandeliers that make the dust shimmer. The band plays slow waltzes, the kind that ring in your ears even after the music fades.

Mingyu places a hand on your waist. You let him.

Your fingers rest against his shoulder, delicate as frost.

He draws you closer, searching for something in your eyes. He finds nothing. Nothing but the practiced smile of a woman doing what is expected.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he says, voice low.

You look away. “I’m tired.”

“Of dancing?” Of me?

You don’t answer. Mingyu guides you in a slow circle. You follow, graceful, perfect. A doll in silk and pearl. Yet, every few beats, your gaze slips towards the doors; towards the windows; towards something far away. He’s used to it now. The Fifth King’s curse has hardened him, but just because he is used to it, it does not make it any easier to be the consolation prize in this lifetime that never belonged to him.

“Do you love him?” he asks suddenly, before he can stop himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say.

You’re right. It doesn’t. Not in this life. Not in this world where your father sold your hand to erase a debt, and his name was the one on the contract. Not in a marriage made of cold sheets and polite lies.

Mingyu exhales slowly. “It does to me.”

You meet his gaze, then, and something flickers in your eyes. Not love, or forgiveness—just sadness, deep and quiet, like the kind that seeps into your bones and never quite leaves.

“You’re not a bad man,” you say softly. “You just aren’t mine.”

He closes his eyes. The music swells. Couples spin around you both like falling leaves.

Mingyu doesn’t say another word. He just holds you a little tighter, for as long as the song lasts, because after tonight, you’ll drift further away. He can feel it, that tide pulling you towards a life you’ll never have and a man he will never be.

But for this dance—just this one—he lets himself imagine you’re his.

The next day, the divorce papers are finalised and the money is settled. You move to Vienna the week after.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1972.

The bartender tells Mingyu you moved to Chicago.

He says it like it’s nothing, like you didn’t leave a hollowed-out space where your voice used to sit on stage at The Red Ribbon, smokey and golden and soft as dusk.

“Packed up two weeks ago,” the freckled boy says, polishing a glass. “Didn’t say much, just left a note for Missy in the back. Said she got an opportunity, somethin’ better. Maybe a record label.”

Mingyu doesn’t ask for details. He doesn’t need them.

He nurses his bourbon in silence for a while, and lets the saxophone on the radio spill into the half-empty room. The walls feel thinner without you—less velvet, more echo. The stage is dark now, the piano covered in a wrinkled sheet.

When he asks for your address, the bartender raises an eyebrow. “You a friend?”

“I was her lover,” Mingyu says, and it’s not wrong.

The man shrugs and writes it down on the back of a bar napkin, sliding it over with two fingers. It’s smudged at the edges, ink bleeding from moisture left behind by someone else’s glass. But the words are clear.

South Side. Chicago. Apartment 2B. ℅ Langford Records.

Mingyu stares at it for a long time. He folds it once and pockets it.

That night, in his apartment above the bakery on Dauphine Street, he sits at the kitchen table with a cigarette burning low and a single lamp flickering behind him. Rain taps gently against the window, steady as a metronome.

He finds a sheet of paper, ivory and heavy. He doesn’t plan to write much.

October 12th, 1972 New Orleans

You left without saying goodbye.

That’s not a complaint. Just… an observation.

The bartender said Chicago. He said you packed light, but you always did. I used to wonder how someone could carry so much in them and still leave so little behind. I guess I have my answer now.

I keep thinking about that night on the balcony. You, with your lipstick smudged and your heels kicked off, humming some Ella Fitzgerald song that only you knew all the words to. You asked me if I believed in fate. I said no. You laughed like I was missing the joke.

I think I get it now.

Maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was just timing. Bad, as always.

I don’t know what you’re chasing up there—music, love, a version of yourself you can finally live with—but I hope you find it. And if you don’t, I hope it finds you anyway.

I won’t write again. This feels like enough.

But if it ever rains in Chicago, and you think of me, just know I was thinking of you too.

– M.

Mingyu folds the letter carefully and slides it into an envelope but doesn’t seal it. He stares at it for a long time. Then he sets it on the counter beside his keys and goes to bed without turning out the lamp.

He never mails it, but every now and then, when the rain hits the windows just so, he reads it again.

JOSEON, KOREA. LATE SUMMER, 1799.

They charge you with treason.

No matter how many times Mingyu kneels before the King, no matter how many sleepless nights he spends rewriting every record, begging the court historian to leave your name out of the final script, no one listens.

It is easier to silence a concubine than to question a minister, easier to blame a woman for sin than to hold a man accountable for love.

So, on the last evening of your life, they dress you in white: a shade meant for funerals; for forgetting.

Your hair, once combed and oiled and pinned with mother-of-pearl, hangs unbound down your back now. The servants didn’t bother with ceremony. They gave you water, and left you in a corner of the gardens, as if you were already half-gone. You sit on the edge of the low stone wall, staring at the lotus pond, legs tucked neatly beneath you and wrists bound.

The ropes around your wrists bite into tender skin—tight, too tight—but you won’t ask them to be loosened. The guards know better than to keep an eye on you. You’re not dangerous, just inconvenient.

You know he’ll come.

You don’t look surprised when Mingyu appears between the carved columns, breathless, his topknot hastily tied and robes disheveled. His boots make no sound against the wooden floor as he drops to his knees before you.

“Please,” he says, his voice shredded down to the bone. “Please tell me you’ll hate me for this.”

You blink slowly. Your lashes are damp with the humidity. “Would that make it easier?”

“No.” Mingyu shakes his head. “But I want you to have something.”

There’s no moon yet, but the light from the lantern by the steps is enough to see him properly. His lips are chapped. There’s ink on his sleeves, on the soft crease where his palm meets his thumb. He hasn’t stopped writing letters, then. Petitions. Pleas.

“You should go,” you say quietly. “If they see you—”

“I don’t care.”

“They’ll strip you of your title.”

“I don’t care.”

His hands are trembling when they reach for yours. He cups your bound wrists with reverence. His touch is a contradiction—soft, but desperate. His thumbs brush over your bruises. You don’t flinch.

Between his palms, you feel something cool press against your skin, smooth and weightless. Your fingers twitch, instinctively curling around it.

A jade rabbit. The kind children carry for luck. The kind lovers carve when words aren’t enough.

You remember once, weeks ago, a charm just like it left behind on the counter behind the Queen Dowager’s quarters—no note, no name. You’d tucked it into the folds of your robes and told yourself it didn’t mean anything. Now, you understand. You clutch it tighter.

“You said once,” Mingyu whispers, “that you didn’t believe in reincarnation.”

You manage a faint smile, remembering his stories of the demon king and the curse of love and memory because of sins past. “I still don’t.”

“Well.” His eyes close briefly, lashes dark against his cheek. “I’ll believe for both of us, then.”

The cicadas outside scream like they know how little time is left.

“It’s just a story,” you say. “No one remembers their past lives.”

“I do,” he says, and something deep in you twists, aching. “And I will. I’ll find you again.”

“I don’t want to be remembered like this,” you whisper.

“I won’t remember the ropes,” Mingyu says. “I’ll remember the way you fold paper cranes, and recite poetry, and the sound of your laugh when you think no one’s listening.”

Your throat tightens. There’s a sob there, buried deep, but it won’t surface. You’re too tired for crying. “Don’t—”

“I’ll remember,” he says. “And one day, somewhere—when you are free and unafraid—I’ll press this rabbit into your palm again, and you’ll know.”

“Mingyu—”

He leans forward slowly, and presses his forehead to your bound hands. The lantern’s light glows between you. The cicadas hush. Far in the distance, a temple bell rings the hour. It’s almost time.

TOKYO, JAPAN. PRESENT DAY.

These days, you find it harder to sleep. The dreams are worse now, beguiling and long and sad. They stretch like old film reels behind your eyes, full of half-familiar cities and names that slip away when you wake. They end with Mingyu, always Mingyu—but not Mingyu at the same time. He wears different clothes, speaks in languages you don’t remember learning.

You shift in bed, sheets tangled around your legs, one arm heavy and warm across your waist.

This version of Mingyu sleeps with his mouth slightly open, his breathing even, steady. His chest rises and falls against your back, his palm curled gently beneath your navel. The window’s been left ajar, and the scent of sakura drifts in on the night air. You press your hand over his absentmindedly. His fingers twitch in his sleep and close tighter around you.

You sigh. Your forehead presses into the pillow. It’s too early or too late to be awake, and you’re tired—so tired—but your body doesn’t know how to rest anymore. Not when your mind insists on wandering. Not when you wake up crying into a man’s arms and can’t tell him why.

You almost speak, but he stirs before you can.

“Mmh,” he mumbles, lips brushing the curve of your shoulder. “You okay?”

“I… had that dream again,” you tell him.

Mingyu lifts his head. He’s groggy, eyes swollen with sleep, but he’s already frowning. Already reaching up to tuck your hair behind your ear.

“The one with the snow?” he asks.

You nod. “And the red ribbon. And a jazz bar.”

He doesn’t laugh, though you’d expect anyone else to. Instead, he kisses your shoulder. “Come closer.”

“I’m already close.”

“Closer,” he says again, like the space between you could ever be enough to stop the ache. Like if he holds you tight enough, he can keep the dreams at bay.

You turn to face him, legs brushing his under the blanket. He touches your cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Do I do something wrong in the dream?” he asks.

“No,” you say. “But you’re sad. Like… you know something I don’t.”

His throat works. His thumb runs along the apple of your cheek, just once. “Maybe I’m dreaming it too.”

You stare at him. It’s too dark to read his expression clearly, but something in you catches at the thought. Maybe he’s dreaming it, too: the same ink-stained hands, the same gardens, the same unfinished goodbyes.

“You think so?” you whisper.

He nods. “Remind me,” he says. “I found this antique rabbit made out of jade yesterday at the market. It reminded me of you. Remind me to give it to you.”

“Okay,” you say, and bury your face against his chest and let him wrap both arms around you. You press your palm over his heart. 

“You talk in your sleep, too, sometimes, you know,” you murmur into the dark. “Who’s the Fifth King?” 

You’re teasing, mostly—half-asleep, your words loose around the edges—but there’s a small, curious lilt to your voice that makes Mingyu still for a fraction of a second. Barely perceptible, just long enough for you to notice.

You continue, lightly, unaware. “Should I be worried?”

He should’ve prepared for this. He’s had five lifetimes to come up with a better answer. Five lifetimes of choices and mistakes and prayers spoken into temples and alleyways and bomb shelters. Five lifetimes of watching you slip through his fingers, of losing you just when he thought he might have a chance.

He should’ve been ready.

Mingyu exhales slowly, letting his palm slide a little higher on your stomach, grounding himself in the warmth of your skin. Your breathing is calm now. You trust him.

He leans in and kisses your shoulder again, and says, “No one.”

You shift a little in his arms, not entirely convinced. “Sounds like a someone.”

He smiles against your skin, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just a strange dream. One of those names that sticks for no reason. You know how it is.”

“We’re weird,” you mumble. “I mean… you and me.”

“I know,” Mingyu says, and he means it more than you’ll ever understand.

You don’t see the way his gaze always rests on you in the dark after you drift off. You don’t feel how tight his arms become, how he pulls you closer like he’s afraid you’ll vanish in your sleep.

You don’t know that he remembers everything.

The snow in Bukchon. The teahouse. The library in the palace. The battlefield and your name on the inside of his sleeve. Paris and silence. New Orleans and the ribbon in your hair. The prison courtyard and the jade rabbit you clutched until the rope took you. All of it.

He remembers the taste of your ginger tea; the colour of your blood on his hands; the sound of your voice in French; the way you looked at him in a jazz bar in 1972 and said, “Don’t fall in love with me.”

Too late, he’d wanted to say. Too many lives too late.

Now, in this quiet Tokyo apartment, with your fingers unconsciously curled into the fabric of his shirt, he knows the Fifth King has finally allowed him to keep you. He has grown tired of watching him suffer. That was the promise, that in this fifth and final life, he can keep you safe and warm, tucked into his side, where the only real concerns are whether he’s put the laundry to dry, or what to cook for dinner.

Mingyu watches the sky begin to pale through the window, watches your lashes flutter in sleep. He watches your mouth part like you’re about to say his name, even here, even now. He thinks about the red ribbon he keeps tucked inside his coat pockets, and the worn-out letter in his dresser, and the jade rabbit he keeps underneath his pillow, and he smiles into your hair.