Chapter Text
In the years following the day he walked away from his old life, Jeon Jeongguk bloomed into someone unrecognizable to those who had once sought to break him.
Freed from the suffocating shadows of his past, he poured his entire soul into his true passion: art. What started as small, quiet canvases painted in his sunlit apartment eventually caught the attention of local curators. His work—known for its striking contrast of deep, shadowy tones and radiant, almost celestial warmth—resonated with people in ways critics struggled to put into words. They said his paintings felt like memories of a dream you couldn't quite name.
By his mid-thirties, Jeongguk had established his own art gallery in the heart of Seoul: Lumière.
It was a spacious, sunlit sanctuary with high white walls and polished wooden floors. To help him run the gallery, the very first person he hired was Kang Eunyoo—the hardworking former assistant from his old firm. She had been the only one who had ever shown him quiet kindness under Mr. Park’s tyrannical rule.
"I still can't believe you remembered me, Director Jeon," Eunyoo said one afternoon, setting a fresh stack of exhibition catalogs on his desk with a warm smile. "When you called me after quitting that awful company, I thought I was dreaming."
Jeongguk looked up from his sketchpad, offering her a genuine, bunny-toothed grin. "You were the only one who didn't let Mr. Park push you into stepping on others, Eunyoo-ssi. I knew if I ever built something of my own, I wanted you by my side."
Their professional bond quickly blossomed into a lifelong family tie. When Eunyoo later married and gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl—Jeongguk was named their godfather without hesitation. He spent his weekends spoiling the little ones, filling his gallery with their giggles and finger-paintings, tasting a pure, domestic peace he had never known as a child.
Life had a poetic way of balancing the scales. Not long after Jeongguk established Lumière, news reached him about his old firm. Mr. Park, Sungyeol, had finally met his downfall: an internal investigation revealed he had been embezzling company funds for years, on top of systematically stealing the intellectual property and work of his subordinates. The scandal ended with Mr. Park facing prison time and total financial ruin. When Eunyoo brought him the news, Jeongguk merely listened quietly, feeling no malice—only a quiet validation that justice eventually catches up with those who harm others.
As for his biological family and Jiyeon? They tried repeatedly to reach him once his name began appearing in art magazines and newspaper headlines. His mother sent frantic text messages pretending none of her past cruelty had happened; Jiyeon tried calling from new numbers, claiming she had changed and missed him.
Jeongguk never responded. He didn't block them out of anger; he simply ignored them because they belonged to a life he had outgrown. They no longer held any power over him.
Yet, despite his full, successful life, there was an inexplicable thread pulling at Jeongguk's heart—a quiet, beautiful mystery he could never solve.
Over the decades, whenever he traveled abroad for gallery acquisitions or personal retreats, he found himself instinctively drawn to specific locations across the world.
He spent lingering evenings in Paris, standing by the banks of the Seine, and lingering at the crosswalks where his chest would mysteriously tighten with residual adrenaline and phantom warmth. He spent time in Rome, wandering the ancient stone arches of the Colosseum. He rode a private gondola through the winding back canals of Venice, watching the terracotta walls reflect in the ripples. And in Florence, he stood on a high hotel balcony overlooking the Arno River as a light rain fell over the water.
Whenever he stood in those places, a vivid, overwhelming sensation would wash over his chest.
He would feel the ghost of a warm hand clasped tightly around his own, the faint scent of cedar and wool in the air, and the echo of a deep, velvety voice teasing him or murmuring soft words of comfort. He could feel, with absolute certainty, that he had walked those exact cobblestones with someone—someone who had loved him so fiercely it had rewritten his very soul.
He would look beside him at the empty space, his heart swelling with a bittersweet, profound warmth.
"Who were you?" Jeongguk would whisper softly into the Florentine breeze or the Paris night, smiling through the quiet prickle of unshed tears. He didn't have a name or a face to attach to the feeling, but the love lingering in his chest was real. "Thank you for giving me this life."
Decades rolled past like golden leaves on a quiet river.
Jeongguk lived a long, meaningful, and gentle existence. He watched Eunyoo’s children grow into fine adults; he watched the world change around him, leaving his mark through art, kindness, and love.
Eventually, time claimed its natural course.
At eighty-five years old, Jeon Jeongguk lay in a quiet, private room in a peaceful hospice overlooking a sunlit garden. His hair was snow-white, his skin lined with the rich history of a full life, but his doe eyes—the same starry, gentle eyes—remained bright.
Eunyoo, now an elderly woman herself, sat beside his bed holding his hand, along with her grown children who kissed his forehead with tearful gratitude.
"You can rest now, Uncle Jeongguk," Eunyoo whispered softly, brushing a strand of white hair from his brow. "You did so well. You lived a beautiful life."
Jeongguk offered them a faint, serene nod. He closed his eyes as they quietly stepped out to give him peace, the soft evening ambient light filling the room.
The steady rhythm of the heart monitor slowed down. The ambient sounds of the world began to fade into a peaceful, weightless quiet.
Then, the dim hospital room slowly began to dissolve.
A brilliant, breathtaking light—warm, golden, and boundless—spread across Jeongguk’s vision. It wasn't cold or clinical; it felt like stepping into the sunlit morning of a long-forgotten memory.
From the center of the radiant light, the figure of a man stepped forward.
He wore a sharp, tailored black coat that swayed gently with his stride. His dark hair fell softly over his forehead, his striking, sculpted features unmarred by time. Resting in his right hand, held casually against his chest, was a single, vibrant red apple.
Taehyung.
He looked exactly as he had on the day he gave up his divinity—handsome, immortal, and brimming with an absolute, eternal devotion.
Taehyung stopped a few paces away, his dark eyes shimmering with unshed celestial tears as he looked at the old man in the bed. A soft, boxy smile—the very same smile that had once lit up the streets of Paris and Italy—broke across his face.
Taehyung slowly extended his left hand toward Jeongguk, his long fingers open and waiting.
"It's time to come home, my love," Taehyung murmured, his deep, velvety voice echoing through the light like a long-awaited melody.
In that singular, sacred second, the divine veil that had locked away Jeongguk’s memories for sixty years shattered into a million pieces.
Every memory flooded back into Jeongguk's mind in a blinding, glorious rush: The bucket list. The banter on the Seoul streets. The near-miss on the Paris crosswalk. The sun on the Tuscan hills. The rain-slicked balcony in Florence. The weight of Taehyung's body over his under the sheets. The roaring celestial storm. The divine chains. And the heartbreaking, desperate promise whispered right before Taehyung dissolved into light.
“I promise I will be with you again.”
Jeongguk’s chest heaved with a soft, gasping breath—not of pain, but of overwhelming, ecstatic recognition.
The wrinkles on his skin, the weight of eighty-five years, and the weakness of his mortal frame evaporated. His soul lifted, youthful and weightless once more, stepping out of the physical shell left behind on the bed.
Looking up at the reaper who had endured the pit of judgment, waited through the decades, and returned to claim his soul at the end of time, Jeongguk let out a breathless, radiant laugh. Tears of pure joy spilled down his cheeks as a brilliant bunny smile broke across his face.
Jeongguk reached forward and placed his hand firmly into Taehyung’s warm, waiting palm.
"You kept your word," Jeongguk whispered, his voice steady, young, and overflowing with love.
Taehyung pulled him close, wrapping his arms securely around Jeongguk’s waist, burying his face into the crook of Jeongguk’s neck as he let out a shuddering, tearful sigh of relief.
"I will always keep my word to you, my angel," Taehyung breathed, kissing the side of Jeongguk’s head, holding him as if he would never let him go again. "Forever."
Hand in hand, their fingers tightly interlaced, Taehyung and Jeongguk turned together and walked straight into the infinite, golden light—reunited at last, never to be parted again.