#*han

There had been a time when, if someone had asked, he would have been able to explain the hidden meaning behind each of her tattoos, the reason for every impulsive decision she made. He could tell the precise shade of her mood from the way she lit a cigarette or from the rhythm of her fingers tapping against a table.

Now, instead, he found himself on the opposite side: he was the one who had to ask questions, who had to fill in the gaps, who had to start again from scratch. And he found it hard to accept.

She was the first to notice him, in the half-light of that run-down bar that smelled of cheap alcohol and the cloying sweetness of electronic cigarette vapour people stubbornly insisted on smoking indoors. The neon sign on the wall, a stylised portrait of Che Guevara, cast faint shadows across her face. Sitting in one of the worn leather armchairs, she smiled at him without a trace of surprise. As if she had expected to see him there, after all that time. As if she herself had arranged it.

She got to her feet without bothering to say goodbye to the people she had been talking to. Jisung watched her, frozen in a stillness that did not belong to him, his breath caught somewhere between his throat and his chest. He couldn’t move, not even a single step. As if, all at once, he were no longer in control of his own body.

“I’ve just finished telling Sungeun that this evening needed a twist,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse, resting a hand on his arm. Her fingers tightened just a little, as though to make sure he was really there and not just a figment of her imagination. “I didn’t expect my wishes to come true quite so quickly.”

He managed a small smile. Was he happy to see her? In that exact moment, he couldn’t have answered. But he knew he should have been. Because he had hoped for this meeting. For more than a year, he had spent his evenings glancing around, waiting for her to appear out of nowhere. Like the first time they had met. Like that very night. He had lived in expectation of chance, of an accidental return. His own wishes, too, had been granted. And yet now that she was actually there, he no longer knew how to act. He felt paralysed, exhilarated and terrified all at once. His imagination had never gone any further than this.

“I was actually about to head home,” he admitted.

His empty glass lay on the sticky bar counter, next to a napkin on which he had scribbled something he could no longer remember. The colleagues he had gone out with that evening to shake off the day’s tension had just left, heading for another bar, another round, another headache. Anything to avoid going home to angry wives and screaming children. They had invited him to join them, but he had refused. He had no wife or children waiting for him. Only the quiet of his empty flat.

He knew he shouldn’t have turned them down. He was the newest arrival, and he knew exactly what the consequences would be. The next day at the office, piles and piles of paperwork would be waiting to welcome him. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to go home.

But now that Nara was standing in front of him, with her eyes always slightly glazed, he knew his evening was going to turn out very differently from what he had planned.

He watched her shake her head, an amused expression playing across her face. Her fingers tightened even more around his arm, her thumb tracing small circles through the fabric of his shirt, and he felt the warmth sink all the way into his bones.

“I don’t think so,” she said, laughing. “You’re staying with me.”

Jisung looked at her for a moment, then nodded slightly. Not because he wanted to stay, not because he had suddenly forgotten the pain she had caused him, but because he couldn’t imagine a way to refuse her.

He had never been able to say no to her. He hadn’t then, and he never would be.

Jisung watched Nara light a cigarette. Her back hunched, one hand wrapped around the lighter, the other raised to shield the flame from a wind that wasn’t there, while her lips closed around the small white cylinder, smudging it with lipstick. It had always been the one thing he hated about her: the way she lit her cigarettes. Because for a brief instant, it was as if she changed. Curled in on herself, she lost all her beauty.

But then she was reborn. She blew the smoke upwards and smiled at him, and everything fell back into place.

“Want one?” she asked, holding out the already-open packet.

A year earlier, Jisung wouldn’t have hesitated; he would have had his own pack in his back pocket. Instead, he shook his head slightly. “I’ve quit.”

Nara tilted her head, her eyes narrowing just a fraction, as if she were trying to decide whether he was lying. “Really?”

He shrugged, as though it didn’t matter. “I was ill, a while back,” he said. “I’d drunk too much, stayed out all night, and the next morning I woke up with my throat on fire and a high fever. I was stuck in bed for a week. I quit after that.” He left out the fact that it had been her who’d driven him to lose himself in the crowded streets of Itaewon, zigzagging aimlessly, without a jacket, in the December cold.

Nara laughed, even though there was nothing funny about it. Her laugh sounded too loud, too sharp. She took a step closer and curled her fingers around the hem of his shirt. Jisung felt his body stiffen for a moment. He didn’t move, his hands shoved into his pockets, his gaze fixed on the entrance to the bar, crowded with people chatting between one drag of smoke and the next.

“I should quit too,” she said, her eyes fixed on the cigarette still between her fingers. Jisung expected her to drop it on the ground, even though it was barely half-finished. He’d seen her do it countless times. Instead, Nara brought it back to her lips, inhaled slowly, and blew a cloud of smoke straight into his face. There was something provocative in the gesture, something that didn’t quite sit right with him. But then she laughed, and he found himself laughing too, without really knowing why.

“You look good, Han Jisung,” she said after a brief silence. She stepped closer again; the hand still gripping his shirt lifted to reach his face and rest against his cheek.

Jisung closed his eyes. His body reacted before he had time to realise what was happening, leaning into her palm as he let out a soft sigh. How much he had missed her touch. How much he had missed everything about her. He wanted nothing more than for that moment to last for the rest of eternity. Nothing else.

“Now it’s your turn to tell me you think I look good too,” Nara said. She laughed again, but this time Jisung didn’t join in.

She pulled away and began to spin on the spot, like a child wearing her first princess dress. He saw her stop, sway slightly, and try to make her way back to him on unsteady steps, her head spinning. Jisung caught her by the arm and guided her back to his side. Where, for him, she would always belong.

“I think you look good too,” he said at last. He knew it was what she wanted to hear, and yet something inside him hesitated to believe it. Because now that he was looking at her more closely, he could see the dark circles beneath her make-up, the tension around her mouth that no smile could quite erase. Perhaps it was his subconscious holding him back. Because he didn’t want her to be fine. Not without him. Because without her, he wasn’t fine at all.

He watched her, hoping to catch some detail, some crack, something that would tell him that for her too the past year had been nothing but a string of wasted days, nights spent choking back sobs, forced smiles meant to convince everyone else that she was fine.

But she kept smiling at him, with the same ease as always. Like the girl he had met for the first time more than three years earlier, on the other side of a Gangnam nightclub they had both ended up in by mistake, dragged there by friends and recklessness. The same girl whose gaze he had caught amid the strobe lights, and who had woken up in his bed the next morning. The same girl he had professed to love less than a week later, with a simplicity that had astonished even himself. The same girl who, out of the blue, had abandoned him more than a year earlier, vanishing from his life as if she had never existed. As if everything they had shared had been nothing more than a mistake to be erased.

He saw her shiver, even though it wasn’t cold. A strange sense of unease ran down Jisung’s spine, but he brushed it aside before it could take shape. Nara stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one. Immediately. Without giving herself even a moment’s pause. Again, that brief instant in which she changed into someone Jisung didn’t recognise. Her hands were shaking. Then she straightened and turned back to him. She took his hand.

“Shall we go?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Somewhere.”

Jisung looked at her for a moment. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your friends?”

Nara burst out laughing. “They’re not my friends.”

Jisung didn’t reply. He tightened his grip around her hand and let himself be pulled along, as always.

There was nothing romantic about that night.

There was no snow like the time of their first Christmas together, when they had walked for hours after missing the last underground train, laughing at every stupid thing, the cold nipping at their skin and their minds blurred by alcohol and exhaustion. Nor was there the stifling heat of that summer when they had taken the last train to Busan, only to fall asleep on the beach as the sky slowly began to lighten, damp sand creeping into their clothes.

That night had nothing special about it.

The smell of fried food drifting from the restaurant at the start of the street still hung in the warm air, mingling with the evening’s humidity, while the streetlights cast uneven shadows across the worn asphalt. The sound of a television leaked out from the open windows of the flats lining the road, the clamour of the nightlife district now nothing more than a distant echo. An ordinary night, suspended between spring and summer. Nothing more.

And yet Jisung had the distinct feeling he had lived that night before.

The further they moved into the narrow uphill streets, the more that sense of familiarity began to take shape. The bar on the corner, its warm lights illuminating the few small tables lined up against the wall and the fridge packed with canned beers from all over the world. The restaurant with the wooden veranda and the old advertising poster for a soju brand, featuring Lee Hyori, coquettish in low-rise trousers and a glittering top, now faded, a relic of the early 2000s. And those steep steps leading up to her parents’ flat.

The very steps where they had once sat for hours after he had walked her home, unable to find the strength to part. The same steps Jisung had climbed countless times at the beginning of their relationship, when Nara had still lived there and he had had to sneak in through her bedroom window to avoid being discovered.

It had been years since Jisung had been in that area. It hadn’t even happened by chance.

He stopped, out of breath from the climb. Nara, a few steps ahead, only noticed his absence once she reached the top. He saw her turn back to say something, but when she didn’t find him, she began to look around, disoriented. Then their eyes met again and she smiled once more, and Jisung had the distinct sensation that his heart might burst out of his chest.

Nara retraced her steps and reached him. “You’re a bit out of shape, Han Jisung.”

He smiled, embarrassed, trying to hide how winded he was. It was true, but he didn’t want to show it. He ran a hand through his hair, as if to buy himself time. “I was just thinking…”

Nara stepped closer again. It was always like this with her: one step forward, two steps back. She circled him, as if examining something curious, then stopped in front of him again. “About what?”

“About all the times I had to climb these steps to walk you home,” he said, nodding towards the staircase.

Nara turned in the same direction. Jisung watched her, trying to catch something in her expression, a sign, a flicker that might betray an unspoken thought. But she seemed almost distracted, as if part of her were already somewhere else. Her eyes drifted without settling on anything in particular, her jaw clenched. Where was she, in that moment? What was she thinking? And why was he afraid to ask? She kept scratching the back of her hand, at first lightly, then with an almost involuntary insistence, as if something had bitten her. Her fingers moved relentlessly over the reddening skin. It was a small gesture, and yet it was enough to make him uneasy.

“I didn’t even realise I’d taken this route,” she said. “Force of habit, I suppose…”

Jisung suddenly felt his shoulders grow heavy, as if the full weight of the evening had come crashing down on him all at once. What had he been expecting, really? Had he truly believed she had led him there for a specific reason? Had he hoped that she, too, was looking for something, an excuse to go back, even if only for a moment? He realised, bitterly, just how naïve he had been.

“Now that I think about it, I haven’t been round here in ages,” she went on, smiling at him again with that lightness that always disarmed him.

Jisung raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Really?”

She nodded, laughing softly. She began circling him again, unable to stay still. Like a spinning top gone mad. “Why would I?”

“I thought you might’ve gone back to your parents’ after…”

“After we broke up?” she finished for him. For a brief moment, her smile turned sad, and Jisung felt hope stir again. “No. You know what they’re like. My parents and I aren’t compatible. We’ve never really got on,” she added with a shrug.

Jisung said nothing. He remembered little to nothing about Nara’s parents. The only time he had met them, he’d been so hungover he could barely speak. He had spent the night at her place in secret, too exhausted and intoxicated to make the journey home. But instead of waking at dawn and slipping out of the window as he usually did, he had fallen asleep again. Nara’s mother had discovered them when she went to wake her daughter. A brief, awkward encounter that had left him with a sense of shame he could never quite shake. Barely two weeks later, Jisung had found a flat of his own and Nara had moved in with him. He hadn’t seen her parents again since.

“And where do you live now?” he asked, falling back into step beside her. Nara had already started climbing again, as if staying still in one place for too long were unbearable.

“A bit here, a bit there… depending on who can put me up,” she replied simply.

Jisung wondered whether she was telling the truth, or whether she was choosing only the easiest part to share. For a moment, he considered pressing her, asking whether she had a place she could call home, whether there was anyone looking after her, whether she was really all right. But he decided not to push it. He had the sense that the answer, whatever it was, would hurt.

“I feel a bit guilty,” she said suddenly, turning around and continuing to walk backwards, heedless of any obstacles.

“About what?”

“About all the times I made you come all this way just to walk me home,” she said lightly, as if she were talking about something trivial.

“It never bothered me,” he replied without hesitation. “I just wanted to spend as much time with you as possible.”

Nara stopped short and let him catch up with her. In a sudden impulse, she looped her arms around his neck, hiding her face in the hollow of his shoulder. Jisung, instinctively, wrapped his arms around her. She felt thinner than he remembered. But her arms around him were real, as was her warm breath against his neck, and for a moment Jisung allowed himself to believe that everything could go back to the way it had been. When her scent washed over him, he held her even tighter.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Jisung wanted to reply, to tell her it didn’t matter, but Nara pulled away all at once. She laughed again and started walking as if nothing had happened. The words died in his throat.

Jisung said nothing, a sudden emptiness opening up in his chest. That ‘I’m sorry’ hung suspended between them. What exactly was she apologising for? For all the times he’d had to walk her home? Or was there something more behind her words? Was she sorry for leaving him? For coming back? He clenched his fists and followed her. Because it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Jisung didn’t need to ask where she had been or what she had done. He already knew.

He had seen that transformation too many times not to recognise it: the restlessness melting away in the blink of an eye, her shoulders finally relaxing, her gaze no longer chasing something invisible and beginning simply to drift. The euphoria. The dilated pupils. That dangerous feeling of being invincible.

He had felt it too.

He knew that sensation all too well; he had lived it countless times with her, until he had confused that fleeting euphoria with happiness.

Now, instead, she was keeping him at a distance, as though he had never been part of that world she herself had dragged him into years before.

He should have felt disappointed, perhaps. Or angry. Instead, he felt only a sense of emptiness, an inexplicable nostalgia that almost made him nauseous. The feeling of having been shut out of something that had once belonged to him.

Jisung didn’t know the club they had ended up in, and yet it felt as though he had already been there. Identical to all the others, a parallel universe where time dissolved into bass that made his chest vibrate and strobe lights that reshaped the faces around him. Bodies moving like a single creature with a beating heart, heat rising towards ceilings that were sometimes too high, sometimes too low, and the soles of shoes sticking to a floor slick with spilt alcohol and grime.

Once, that had been his world. Their world.

Nara had turned to him as soon as they went in. She came closer and spoke into his ear, her voice barely audible over the deafening music. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Wait here.”

Jisung nodded, because he knew exactly where she was going. Only a year earlier she would have taken him by the hand and brought him with her, without even asking. Instead, he watched her disappear alone into the crowd, swallowed by shadows and flickering lights. He leaned against the bar, ordered a drink, and waited.

When Nara came back, she was different. Her shoulders lighter, her smile wider. She walked towards him with dancing steps, indifferent to the people bumping into her from every side, as if nothing could really touch her.

“What are you doing, hiding now?” he asked when she was close enough.

She stopped, tilting her head slightly without losing that smile that was too wide, almost manic, distorting her face. For a moment, just a moment, something passed through her eyes. Then she burst out laughing. “Why, do you want some?” she asked, with a hint of mockery in her voice.

Jisung didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. Did he want to? Not exactly. One part of him, the part he had learned to live with over the past year, was telling him no. But another part, the one that reminded him of who he had been, hesitated.

Nara didn’t give him time to decide. Her fingers closed around his wrist and she dragged him towards the centre of the dance floor. The unfamiliar bodies around them pressed in, a cage of heat that swallowed them whole. She turned and began to move in time with the music.

Jisung stayed still for a moment, rigid, aware of every centimetre between them. Then she smiled again and he gave in. He closed his eyes and let himself be pulled along.

“Tell me you’ve stopped,” he heard her shout over the music.

Jisung opened his eyes and looked at her without saying anything.

“Tell me you’ve stopped,” Nara repeated, her eyes wide and shining. She grabbed his shirt again and pulled him closer. “Tell me you’ve stopped with all that shit.”

He nodded, and she kissed him before he could say anything. Her lips were warm and insistent, with a bitter taste he recognised at once. A frantic kiss, almost wrong. Too fast, too intense.

Jisung responded. He held her close, almost roughly, as if afraid she might run away again, dissolve into the lights and the music at any moment.

He remembered the first time Nara had taken him to a place like that. It had been barely a month after they first met. She had taken his hand naturally and said, “Come on, I’ll show you something.” At first, Jisung had felt out of place. He had always tried to stay on the edges of things. But Nara had given him no choice: she dragged him into the middle of the dance floor, put something into his hand and said, “Trust me.”

And he had trusted her.

The nights had blurred into one another. Different clubs, but always the same; faces that changed and yet merged together. They danced until dawn, until their legs could no longer hold them up, and then they went outside and discovered it was already day, that the world had gone on without them.

Jisung had loved that sense of suspension. That feeling of no longer belonging to reality but to something larger and undefined. With Nara, everything seemed possible. Even flying.

After she left, Jisung kept going back to those places. Every Friday, every Saturday, sometimes even during the week. Always the same clubs, always with the same illusion of spotting her somewhere in the crowd. He scanned every face that passed in front of him, looking for her in strangers who had nothing of her.

At first he went alone. Then he began to accept invitations from strangers, friends of friends, anyone who wanted to go out. Because it was easier that way. Because staying sober meant feeling the full weight of the emptiness she had left behind. Because without her, that artificial happiness was the only kind of happiness he could manage to feel.

But something had changed with time. The evenings had begun to blur together, the faces to repeat themselves. He could no longer remember who he had spoken to, what he had done, where he had woken up. One morning he realised he wasn’t looking for Nara at all. He was only trying to relive the same sensations he had felt with her, to rebuild that euphoria in order to fill her absence. But with every awakening, that emptiness grew larger, deeper. If he went on like that, it would swallow him whole.

He had stopped after that night in Itaewon. He had woken up feverish, his body punishing him for everything he had put it through. And as he lay in bed, trembling and alone, he had asked himself what he was doing. And for whom.

There had been no sudden revelation, no conscious decision. Simply, when the fever had gone down, he had understood that the world he had always shared with Nara no longer belonged to him. Perhaps it had never truly belonged to him at all.

Without her, he no longer even felt the need to alter his state of mind. He didn’t want to feel happy if that happiness was fake. He didn’t want to forget if forgetting meant losing even what little beauty had remained. Since then, he had wanted only to stay there, in that suspended limbo. Even if it hurt.

He watched her as she danced, lost in her solitary euphoria. Her hands raised towards the ceiling, her head thrown back, her body swaying without control. She was beautiful in that moment. But unreachable.

He realised that she was still part of that world and couldn’t get out of it. He was watching her from the outside. He had crossed the boundary and no longer knew how to go back.

And yet, for that night, he could pretend. He could pretend that time had never passed, that they were still those same reckless kids from three years earlier. That there was still hope for them.

He closed his eyes and let the music carry him. He allowed himself that illusion for a few more hours.

When he opened them again, Nara was staring at him. The smile was still there, but there was something different in her eyes. Something Jisung couldn’t grasp.

She moved closer, resting her forehead against his. “I’m bored,” she said. “Let’s go.”

And Jisung nodded, because it was the only answer he had.

The flat was exactly as Nara remembered it.

Jisung realised this the moment he switched on the light and saw her gaze settle on every surface, linger on every corner. The chipped mug he had never brought himself to throw away, the purple velvet cushion on the sofa they had bought together at a second-hand market, the succulents he remembered to water once every two months.

He hadn’t changed anything. He hadn’t thrown anything away. As if he had convinced himself that sooner or later she would come back, and would want to find everything exactly as it had been.

But now that she was really there, Jisung noticed the mess. Dirty cups piled in the sink, jackets abandoned on the sofa, takeaway containers still waiting on the balcony to be thrown out. He ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said with an uncertain smile. “I didn’t know that… I wasn’t expecting…”

Nara didn’t seem to hear him. She had moved closer to the wall where, years earlier, she herself had hung the faded polaroids, her fingers brushing the edge of one photograph in particular. The one taken in Busan, their faces too pale, their eyes closed from the flash that had caught them by surprise.

“You kept them,” she murmured, almost to herself.

Jisung didn’t answer straight away. He simply nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at him.

Nara moved towards the sofa and let herself fall back against it. She closed her eyes for a moment, her head tipped back, and Jisung had the impression that she was trying to imprint everything into her memory. Or perhaps, on the contrary, she was trying to empty her mind.

“I thought you’d thrown them away,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“No.”

“Why?” she asked calmly.

Jisung didn’t know how to answer. Why should he have? Why should he have erased every trace of her when he had never really stopped thinking about her? But he didn’t say any of that. He just shrugged, even though she couldn’t see him.

Nara opened her eyes and fixed them on him. There was something in her gaze that Jisung couldn’t decipher. Then she smiled and held out her hand.

“Come here,” she said.

Jisung stepped closer, his heart beginning to beat faster in his chest. He sat down beside her, leaving a small space between them, even though every fibre of his body wanted to erase it completely.

Nara was the first to move. She shifted closer until their legs touched. Then she placed a hand on his knee, her fingers tracing small circles through the fabric of his trousers.

“I missed you,” she said again, as if it were the only thing she knew how to say.

Jisung swallowed. “I missed you too.”

She leaned in, her face only centimetres from his. Jisung could feel her breath, warm and uneven. He could see every detail of her face: the smudged eyeshadow, her slightly cracked lips, her eyes shining with a light that wasn’t entirely natural.

But he didn’t care. Not in that moment. All he could see was Nara, finally there, finally his again.

She kissed him softly, almost hesitantly. Her lips gentle against his. He returned the kiss, one hand rising to cup her cheek, the other finding her hips.

Nara shifted, straddling him with a fluid movement. Her arms circled his neck, her fingers threading into his hair. The kiss deepened, charged with a hunger that tasted of absence, as if they were trying to make up for all the lost time in a single moment.

Jisung felt the warmth of her body against his, the familiar weight anchoring him to the sofa. His hands slipped under her shirt, his fingers slowly tracing the curve of her back. Her skin was warm, almost too warm, and when he noticed Nara trembling slightly, he hesitated. From the cold? From desire? He didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

Nara pulled away from the kiss for a moment, breathless. She looked at him and, for an instant, just an instant, Jisung saw something that resembled sadness. Then she smiled, and the thought vanished.

She stood up suddenly, taking his hand and leading him through the flat. Jisung followed her, his eyes fixed on her back, on the way her hair fell over her shoulders.

The bedroom was in complete chaos. Clothes piled on the chair, books scattered across the bedside table, the bed still unmade. But Nara didn’t seem to notice. She turned towards him and her hands found the hem of his shirt, unbuttoning it with quick, impatient, almost frantic movements.

Jisung let her. He watched her, trying to memorise every detail: the way she bit her lower lip when she concentrated, the small crease that formed between her eyebrows. She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her.

When his shirt fell to the floor, Nara placed her hands on his chest. Her fingers traced the lines of his tattoos, his muscles, slid down his stomach, and stopped at his belt. She looked at him, waiting for a sign.

Jisung nodded.

She smiled and began to undo his belt. Jisung closed his eyes for a moment, trying to steady his breathing. When he opened them again when no longer felt her hands on him, he saw that Nara had already pulled off her top, revealing her black bra and the pale skin he knew so well. A new tattoo caught his attention: a carnival mask drawn along her ribs.

He moved closer to her, letting his hands slide down her hips until they reached the buttons of her jeans. He undid them slowly and Nara let him without a word. When the jeans fell to the floor, she stepped back and sat down on the bed, her gaze fixed on him.

Jisung joined her, kneeling in front of her. His hands slid along her thighs, feeling the shivers that ran across her skin. He leaned forward and kissed her knee, then slowly moved up along the inside of her thigh. Nara gasped, her hands clutching the sheets.

“Jisung,” she whispered, barely audible.

He stopped and looked up at her. “What?”

“Nothing. Keep going.”

And he did, his lips following a slow, deliberate path over her skin, his hands holding her steady while her body reacted to every movement. When he reached the edge of her underwear, he stopped and looked at her again. She nodded, and he removed it slowly.

Nara was trembling, shaken by small, uncontrollable shivers. Jisung noticed and grew worried. “Are you cold?”

“No,” she replied, her voice tight. “I’m fine. Please, keep going.”

And he did, because he couldn’t say no to her. Because he wanted to give her everything she asked for. His lips brushed the inside of her thigh, then moved higher, and Nara moaned softly, her head falling back.

Jisung lost himself in her. In her taste, in the way her body responded to every touch, every kiss. Nara’s hands threaded into his hair, her fingers tightening whenever he did something that made her gasp.

When he felt her nearing the edge, he stopped. Nara opened her eyes, confused, almost offended. “Why did you stop?”

Jisung didn’t answer. He stood up, pulling off his trousers and boxers. Then he lay down beside her and drew her to him. Nara settled over him, her legs on either side of his hips, her gaze locked with his.

For a moment they stayed like that, motionless, their ragged breathing filling the silence. Then Nara lowered herself slowly and Jisung closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the intensity of the sensation.

It felt like coming home. Like finding a part of himself he had thought lost forever. They moved together in a rhythm that needed no words, a language their bodies remembered even though their minds had tried to forget.

Jisung kept his hands on her hips, guiding her, while she leaned on his chest. Her face was a mask of concentration, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open. She was beautiful. She was perfect.

At one point, Nara opened her eyes and looked at him. There was something in that look Jisung didn’t recognise, something that resembled desperation. But then she leaned forward and kissed him with a force that stole his breath, and the thought vanished again.

They moved faster now, their bodies meeting with an urgency that was almost violent. Jisung felt Nara trembling above him, felt her moans grow sharper, more desperate. His hands slid along her back, feeling the sweat on her skin.

When they reached the peak, Nara collapsed against him, her face buried in the hollow of his neck. Jisung held her close, one hand stroking her hair, the other drawing small circles on her back.

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. Their breathing slowly calmed, their heartbeats returning to normal. Jisung felt her weight on him, the warmth of her body, and thought there was nowhere else in the world he would rather be.

“I love you,” he whispered, without even realising he had said it.

Nara didn’t answer. Jisung felt something wet against his neck, but when he shifted to look at her, she had already turned away, her back to him.

“Nara?”

“I’m tired,” she murmured. “Let’s sleep.”

Jisung hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He moved beside her, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her close. She let him, without protest, but her body was rigid, tense.

Jisung noticed, but chose to ignore it. He chose to believe it was only exhaustion. He chose to believe everything would be all right.

He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent. It had changed, he realised. There was something else now, something sharper, more bitter. But it didn’t matter. It was her. It was Nara.

He thought about how right everything felt in that moment. As if all the pieces of his life had finally fallen back into place. As if the past year had been nothing more than a bad dream he had finally woken from.

He thought about the future. About having breakfast together the next morning, about taking her out to dinner in the days that followed, about starting again from the beginning.

He thought that perhaps, at last, his love would be enough.

Nara shifted slightly in his arms, a small jolt as if she were falling into a dream. Jisung held her tighter, almost afraid she might disappear again. But she was there. She was real. She was his.

He closed his eyes, his heart full of a happiness he hadn’t felt in more than a year. He fell asleep with a smile on his lips, convinced that in the morning their new life together would begin.

He found her sitting on the sofa, curled up against the armrest as if she were trying to take up as little space as possible. Her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. She kept scratching her right forearm, her nails leaving red marks on her skin. A mechanical movement, almost unconscious.

Nara was crying without making a sound.

Jisung stopped in the doorway, still dazed with sleep. He had woken abruptly with the sudden feeling of being alone. The empty bed had made him jump up and rush into the living room, just to make sure the night before had not been a dream, a mere hallucination. The light of dawn filtered through the curtains, dull and grey.

“Nara?” he called, cautiously.

She flinched. She turned slightly, her eyes red and swollen, last night’s make-up smeared beneath them. She looked at him for a second, an expression of near disgust on her face, then turned back to stare at the wall in front of her.

Jisung came closer and sat beside her on the sofa. Not too close, as if afraid of frightening her. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Can’t you sleep?”

Nara didn’t answer. She kept scratching herself, her fingers moving faster and faster. Jisung reached out to stop her, but she pulled away.

“Nara, talk to me,” he pleaded.

She shook her head. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a dark streak of mascara on her cheek. “I shouldn’t have come back,” she said, her voice so low it seemed about to break.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have,” she repeated, then laughed, a strangled sound that seemed almost as if it didn’t belong to her. “Fuck, I’m so stupid.”

Jisung tilted his head, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

Nara jumped to her feet, as if she could no longer stay still. She began pacing back and forth across the small living room, her arms wrapped around herself. Her hands kept moving: scratching, clutching, digging into her skin with her nails as if she wanted to tear it away.

“Look at this place,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the walls around them. “It’s all exactly the same as before.”

Jisung stared at her, confused. “So?”

“So nothing has changed!” she said, her voice louder, sharper, almost hysterical. “As if… as if I’d never left.”

Jisung ran a hand through his hair nervously. He couldn’t understand. He had fallen asleep certain that when he woke up everything would finally make sense. That they would start living again as if the past year had never existed. That they would take their life back.

“Why should I have changed anything?” he said, almost stubbornly. “In the end, you came back. You’re here.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Nara shook her head violently. “It was a mistake. All of this… last night…” She turned towards him, her eyes full of tears she was desperately trying to hold back. “It was a mistake.”

The words hit him like a slap.

For a moment, Jisung couldn’t breathe. His legs gave way and he had to lean against the back of the sofa to keep from collapsing. Just a few hours earlier they had been together. A few hours earlier she had smiled at him, kissed him, fallen asleep in his arms. And now she stood there in front of him, calling all of it a mistake.

He stood up as well and took a step towards her. “How can you say that? Last night…”

“Last night shouldn’t have happened,” Nara interrupted, stepping back. “I…” She stopped, her hands visibly shaking. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Be with me?” Jisung asked. There was no anger in his voice. Only confusion. Disorientation.

She didn’t answer. She turned to face the window. Jisung saw her trembling, her body shaken by small shivers she couldn’t control.

“When you got that job a year ago… do you remember what you told me?” Nara asked suddenly, her voice lower, as if trying to hold on to a calm that no longer belonged to her. She wiped her face again, but the tears kept falling. “You started talking about the future. About saving money. About finding a bigger flat.”

Jisung took another step towards her, hoping she wouldn’t retreat again. “Yes. I wanted to build something with you.”

“And I watched you…” she murmured, then turned back to him. There was something broken in her eyes. “I listened to you talking about all those things, but I couldn’t see myself in any of them.” 

“What do you mean?” he pressed, more and more confused.

“I mean that every time you talked about the future, all I could see was…” She raised a hand to her mouth, choking back another sob. “All I could see was how lost you had become. Because of me.”

Jisung shook his head. “That’s not true…”

“Yes, it is,” she snapped. “You ended up in that shit just to stay with me. Just to follow me.” Her words now spilled out faster, almost overlapping. “And the more I looked at you, the more I saw that you were destroying yourself, and I… I couldn’t even look at you anymore.”

“Then why did you leave without saying anything?” he insisted, his voice breaking. “Why didn’t you tell me all this? We could have talked about it, we could have found a…”

“Because if I had told you the truth, you would have tried to convince me to stay,” Nara said, looking straight into his eyes. “And I didn’t want to be convinced. You wanted to save yourself, Jisung. And I had no intention of doing the same.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

Jisung stared at her, trying to understand, to put the pieces together. But the more he tried, the less sense it made. “So what does all this mean, exactly?” he asked at last.

“Why didn’t you just ignore me when you saw me? Why did you drag me around all night if you didn’t want anything to do with me?”

Nara lowered her gaze and started scratching her forearm again. “I don’t know.” 

“That’s not an answer.” 

She shrugged slightly. “It’s the only one I have.” 

Jisung stepped towards her, his hands lifting instinctively. His voice cracked.

“We can try again. Things are different now. I have a stable job, I can help you, we can…” 

“No,” she cut him off sharply. “No, Jisung.” 

“Why not? We can…” 

“Because I can’t, damn it!” Nara exploded, spinning towards him. “Why can’t you understand that I can’t be what you’re asking me to be? I can’t… I don’t know how.” 

“Be what?” he pressed, panic rising in his voice.

“Be the person you want me to be,” she whispered, as if afraid of the words themselves. Tears streamed down her face and this time she didn’t try to stop them. “The one with a normal job, a normal life, a normal future. I don’t…” She stopped again, her body trembling more and more. “I don’t even know how to do that.” 

Jisung looked at her, something cracking inside him. He was losing her again. She was slipping through his fingers again.  “We can learn together…” 

“No!” she shouted, throwing her arms out in a violent gesture. “Don’t you see me, Jisung? Look at me.” 

And he did.

He saw the bloodshot eyes, the pupils still too wide in the cruel light of dawn. He saw the deep circles no make-up could hide anymore. He saw the pale, almost grey skin. He saw the trembling hands, the arms covered in red marks where she had scratched herself all night. He saw her body too thin, her tense posture, her gaze unable to stay still. 

He saw someone he no longer recognised. 

“Do you see me now? Do you really see me?” Nara said, her voice calmer now. Almost resigned. “This is who I am.” 

Jisung shook his head, desperately trying to hold on to something. “But I… I can help you. We can…” 

“No,” Nara repeated. She turned and walked towards the door. “You can’t.” 

She began gathering her things in a rush. The jacket thrown over the chair. The shoes by the door. Frenzied, disordered movements. 

“What are you doing?” Jisung asked, his voice trembling. 

“I’m leaving.” 

“Nara, wait…” 

“I can’t stay, don’t you understand?” she sighed, exhausted. She slipped her shoes on without tying them. “I can’t. Please don’t ask me again.”

Jisung shook his head and followed her, almost tripping over his own feet. He lifted a hand in front of her, but didn’t touch her, as if he no longer had the right to stop her. “Please, let’s talk about this.” 

She pushed his hand aside and went to the door. She opened it with a rough, desperate movement.

“Nara…” 

She stopped for a moment on the threshold, her back to him. Jisung waited for her to turn around, to say something, anything.

But she walked out without looking back.

The door closed with a dull sound that echoed through the empty flat. Jisung stood still, his hand still stretched towards a space that no longer existed. He stared at the closed door, as if it might open again at any moment. As if she might come back. As if this were only a moment of passing panic.

But the door stayed shut.

For a long moment, Jisung couldn’t move. His legs barely held him up, his breathing shallow and uneven. He looked around. The flat was exactly as it had always been. The photos on the wall. The purple cushion. The chipped mug on the table. Everything the same. Everything in its place.

Everything empty.

Jisung closed his eyes, trying to summon the feeling from a few hours earlier: the warmth of her body, her scent, the certainty that everything would be all right. But he couldn’t. It was as if that night already belonged to someone else, to a version of himself that no longer existed.

He sat down on the sofa, in the same place where she had been curled up only moments before. His hands were shaking.

He looked at the photographs on the wall. Their smiling faces, trapped in moments that seemed to belong to another life.

For the first time since seeing her again, he allowed himself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the person in those photos no longer existed.

And perhaps she had never existed in the way he had believed.

The pile of documents on his desk seemed to have multiplied since the last time Jisung had looked at it.

He hadn’t managed to sleep at all after Nara left. His body felt heavy, as if someone were sitting on his shoulders, pushing him down with all their weight. His eyes burned every time he blinked. And yet he had gone to work anyway, because staying in that flat, lying helpless in the bed where she had been just hours earlier…

No.

He picked up the first document and stared at it. The words crawled across the page like frantic ants. He tried to focus. Nothing. Emptiness. Just the sound of his breath, too fast, and the relentless pounding of blood in his temples.

I shouldn’t have come back.

He clenched his teeth and forced his gaze back onto the page. He read the first line. Then read it again. And again. The words fell apart before his eyes: numbers, dates, meaningless sentences, words arranged only to fill space. What was he supposed to be checking? He couldn’t even remember anymore. Why was he there, in that bleak office on the tenth floor of a soulless skyscraper? He couldn’t even recall how he had got there.

He ran a hand over his face. His fingers were trembling. Around him the office was alive. Voices, laughter, the sound of the coffee machine in the room next door. Everything too sharp, too normal. As if the world hadn’t just split in two.

It was a mistake.

The document slipped from his fingers and fell into the narrow space between his body and the desk, landing on his knees. He picked it up and placed it back on top of the pile. He took another one, but the result was the same. He couldn’t concentrate for more than a few seconds.

He closed his eyes, resting his elbows on the desk and hiding his face in his hands. He saw her, her eyes swollen from crying, her fingers scratching at her arm without stopping, as if trying to dig something out from beneath her skin. He opened his eyes sharply, as though he could banish the image by force. In front of him again: the bare desk, the documents waiting to be filed, the neon light buzzing above his head. He sighed.

His gaze drifted to the landline phone beside his computer. For one second, just one, his hand moved towards it in a mechanical gesture, then stopped mid-air. What would he have done? Nara had changed her number. When she left the first time, she had erased every way of reaching her. As if he had never existed.

As if the two of them had never existed.

He took a sip of coffee, now cold. He couldn’t even remember when, or where, he had got it.

A colleague passed by and said something to him. Jisung nodded without having understood a single word. And every time he closed his eyes, even for the briefest blink, she came back, curled up on the sofa, crying as if something inside her were breaking apart.

Or maybe it was him who was breaking.

Time passed without him noticing. When he finally looked at the clock, it was already midday. How was that possible? It felt as though he had arrived only five minutes earlier.

“Coming to lunch?”

Jisung looked up. One of the colleagues he had gone out with the night before, the one with the loud laugh. He would have preferred to stay where he was. He would have preferred not to eat at all. He wasn’t hungry. But he nodded anyway, because being alone with his thoughts, with nothing to distract him, felt even worse.

The canteen was crowded and noisy, but he barely noticed. Once he sat down at the table with his team, he began pushing the food around his plate, unable to eat even a single bite. His stomach had completely closed in on itself.

“Hey, you alright?” someone asked. “You look like a zombie.”

Laughter burst out around him. Jisung forced a tired smile. “Rough night.”

“Oh, right,” the colleague went on. “I thought someone had died.”

More laughter followed. Jisung joined in, but his laugh sounded off, almost jarring. He lifted his gaze from the plate and saw his boss staring at him from the other side of the table. He wasn’t laughing. He was just watching him with an expression of pure disapproval.

Jisung immediately looked away, pretending not to notice, and went back to staring at his plate. Nausea surged up his throat without warning. The fork slipped from his fingers. He picked it up with shaking hands and stood abruptly.

He went back to the office and dropped into his chair. He switched his computer back on and searched through one of the many folders on his desktop for a document he needed to print. He opened it, sent it to print, and stood up to go to the printer.

Nothing.

He stopped halfway there and turned back. There was nothing in the print queue. He hadn’t clicked anything. He sighed and sat down again. Tried once more, then returned to the printer.

You wanted to save yourself. I had no intention of doing the same.

He leaned against the printer, his hands pressed against the plastic edge. His legs suddenly felt weak. The world seemed to spin wildly around him.

She had never really wanted him. Not once. Not in the way he had wanted her.

And he had believed it. He had believed every word, every smile. So much so that he had built a future on it, a future that existed only in his head.

He picked up the still-warm pages and slowly returned to his desk. He sat down heavily and stared at the documents without really seeing them.

Daegu.

The thought came out of nowhere. Daegu, two years earlier. A job offer that had appeared almost out of thin air, helped along by one of his university professors. A real salary. Real prospects. A concrete chance to step out of that suspended life. And he had turned it down, just because Nara would never have moved. Because Seoul was the only place she could stand to be.

She had chosen for both of them. And, as always, Jisung had gone along with it, incapable of saying no.

But had she ever chosen him?

And that time she had disappeared for three days, Jisung roaming the city like a madman, hoping to find her safe and alive. He had called everyone: friends, acquaintances, even her parents. He had imagined the worst. Then she had come back, her eyes glassy, the exhaustion of someone who hadn’t slept for days etched into her face. Jisung hadn’t got angry. He had just held her, without asking a single question. Maybe because he was afraid of the answers. Maybe because he already knew he wouldn’t like them.

He drummed his fingers nervously against the desk. His heart was beating too fast, too hard.

He had loved her. God, how he had loved her. And how he still loved her. Enough to do anything to keep her with him. Enough to give up entire parts of his own life without even realising it.

And she, instead, had left again.

So selfish.

The thought struck him suddenly, sharply, so unexpected it almost knocked the breath out of him.

Immediately, a strange sense of guilt took hold. No. He shouldn’t think that. Not of her. Not of the woman he had loved for so many years. A fragile woman. A woman who was unwell.

But it was the truth. She was selfish. She had come back out of necessity, because she needed a place to stay, someone beside her. Not because she wanted him, but because she needed someone willing to give her what she wanted. Without conditions. Without questions. And he had been there, ready to indulge her, just as he always had.

And she had left again.

He looked at the documents in front of him. One, two, three. He stacked them on top of each other, pretending there was some logic to it. He moved them, then put them back. His hands moved without purpose, driven only by the need not to stay still.

He thought back over the past year, the succession of days that had all unfolded in the same way: waking up, going to work, coming home. A routine that had solidified day after day without him even noticing. He had thought that only emptiness filled his life, the emptiness Nara had left behind.

But now, for the first time, he found himself thinking that maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe it was simply the first time in years that anxiety hadn’t been constantly gnawing at his stomach. The first time he hadn’t spent entire nights chasing a feeling that had never truly satisfied him. Altering his state of mind just to feel on the same level as the only person he truly cared about, just to endlessly meet her needs. The first time he had breathed without feeling suffocated.

He had believed that quiet was absence. Lack. Emptiness.

Now he understood that maybe it was just peace.

With Nara, it had always been all or nothing. Euphoria or the abyss. Black or white. And in either extreme, there had never been a moment of peace.

And he had thought that was love.

He felt anger swell inside him, hotter, denser, almost suffocating. It pressed against his chest like a weight he could no longer contain. It wasn’t fair.

Another colleague passed by and said something. Jisung nodded again, without understanding a word.

He checked the clock. Four in the afternoon. Where the hell had the time gone?

Can’t you see me?

He had finally seen her. And the person standing in front of him was no longer the woman he remembered, no longer the one he had sworn to love.

The office began to empty. One by one, his colleagues said goodbye and wished him a good evening. Some teased him about all the work he still had to do; others tried to invite him out for a drink, with little success. Jisung ignored them. He didn’t care if he had to stay in that office for hours longer. He didn’t want to go home. What had once been a small shrine to their love now made him feel nauseous, repulsed.

He picked up a document. Moved it. Picked up another. Stacked it on top. Then another. And another.

When he looked up again, the office was almost empty. Outside, it was dark. How much time had passed?

He stood up, his legs stiff, his back aching. Papers were scattered across the desk. He gathered them, trying to organise them with nervous movements.

I had no intention of doing the same.

Some sheets slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. He bent to pick them up, but his hands were shaking too badly to grip them. He grabbed them all at once, crumpling them, then slammed them down on the desk. The sound exploded in the silence.

A colleague flinched and turned towards him, startled. Jisung noticed that the few people still there were staring at him in surprise.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice tight. “I’m sorry.”

No one said anything. They turned back to their screens as if nothing had happened. As if he weren’t falling apart in front of them.

Jisung stood still, his hands planted on the desk. His eyes burned, his throat closed, his chest heavy as stone.

He turned away. Walked across the office without looking at anyone and reached the bathroom. He pushed the door open and locked himself inside.

Silence.

He leaned against the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He saw someone he didn’t recognise. Red eyes. Deep, dark circles. Pale skin.

The first sob escaped before he could stop it, choked, almost a gasp. Then another. And then he couldn’t stop.

He slid down against the wall, his head in his hands. And he cried. He cried for everything: for her, for himself, for everything they had been through, for everything they would never have. For the years wasted. For the wrong choices. For a love that had never been enough.

He cried until there was nothing left.

He saw her again while walking home from work, by chance.

She was standing outside a bar Jisung didn’t know, though he had noticed it before along the way. He watched her light a cigarette: her back hunched, one hand cupped around the lighter and the other raised to shield the flame. The same gesture Jisung had always hated. That brief instant in which she became something less beautiful.

Then she straightened, blew the smoke upwards, and smiled.

But not at him.

Jisung stopped on the other side of the street. Nara was surrounded by a group of people he had never seen before, drinks in hand, laughter dissolving into the noise of traffic. But she was speaking to only one man. Young, dark hair, leather jacket. The same kind of person Nara had always been drawn to. The same kind of person Jisung himself had once been.

He watched her laugh at something the man said. Her hand rested on his arm, her fingers tightening slightly. He noticed the way she leaned forward when she spoke, as though what she was saying were the most important thing in the world.

Jisung knew that language. He had seen it directed at him hundreds of times. He had thought it was special. He had thought it meant something.

Now he understood that it was simply the way Nara searched. She searched for someone who would say yes. Someone who would make her feel seen, important, necessary. It didn’t matter who they were. What mattered was that they were willing to give.

And Jisung had given everything.

He watched her bring the cigarette to her lips, inhale, exhale the smoke to the side. The man said something and she laughed again, shaking her head. Then she turned towards the group, said something that made everyone laugh. But after a moment she turned back to the man, her gaze fixed on him.

Jisung felt something tighten in his chest. Not pain. Not anger. Just a distant sadness, like looking at something through fogged glass.

He knew how it would go. The man would follow her. He would say yes to everything she asked. He would think he could save her, change her, be different from the others. And for a while, perhaps, he would be happy. Perhaps he would even believe it was love.

And then Nara would leave. Because that was what she did. She was searching for something she couldn’t find in anyone, not even in herself. And she would keep searching, slipping, getting lost. Again and again.

Jisung knew it. And he knew that she knew it too.

But there was nothing he could do.

Nara laughed again, her head thrown back, and for a moment Jisung really saw her. Not the girl he had fallen in love with. Not the one in the photos on the wall that he had finally thrown away. But the person she was now. Someone trapped in a cycle she couldn’t break. Someone sliding downward, slowly, inevitably.

And he could no longer follow her.

For the first time since he had met her, Jisung felt the absence of that pull. That voice inside him that had always told him to run to her, to say yes, to give one more chance. It wasn’t there anymore. Or maybe it was, but so faint that he could finally ignore it.

If she had turned around in that moment. If she had seen him. If she had smiled at him and asked him to stay, to follow her, to give her one more night, one more chance…

I don’t know, Jisung thought. And then, more clearly: No.

Not with anger. Not with pain. Just no.

Nara said something to the man, then turned to go back inside the bar. The group followed her, laughter and voices fading behind the closing door. The man hesitated for a moment, looking at the cigarette Nara had dropped on the ground, still burning. Then he followed her inside.

Jisung remained still for another moment, watching the closed door. Then he turned and started walking again.

He didn’t look back.

The bar was crowded that evening. Jisung was sitting at a table with his colleagues, an almost empty beer in front of him. Someone was telling a story he’d already heard, but he laughed anyway when everyone else did.

He glanced around absent-mindedly. The crowd moving between tables, faces lit by soft lights, laughter breaking out here and there.

And then he stopped.

He wasn’t looking for her.

When had he stopped? He didn’t know. Maybe weeks earlier. Maybe that very evening. Or maybe it had happened gradually, so slowly that he hadn’t even noticed.

One of his colleagues asked if he wanted another round. Jisung nodded, smiling.