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The waves surged like thick black oil, hurling themselves against the jagged rocks with a fury that shook the land itself. Each crash sent a shiver through the ground beneath the young man’s feet, as if the earth, too, recoiled from the violence of the sea. He stood unmoving, shoes sunk into the frozen soil, as if anchored by the weight of something far heavier than his own body.
Above him, the sky churned with shadows. The moon, veiled by storm-bloated clouds, cast no warmth—only a muted glow, dull and cold, like tarnished silver. The clouds twisted and rolled in slow, heavy spirals, stained with the same darkness that haunted the depths of the sea below. They recalled the suffocating strokes of Goya’s nightmares, his black paintings come alive in the night sky.
A damp wind moved through the air like breath held too long—then released in a shudder. It stirred the brittle grass, yellowed and heavy with frost, and combed its fingers through the wild sea, flattening crests into foaming ribbons. The salt in the air hung thick, clinging to skin and lashes, seeping into the cracks of his lips. And still, he didn’t move.
Somewhere between land and water, shadow and moonlight, the night held its breath—waiting.
The rain fell like splinters of glass, sharp and cold, lashing at his skin with merciless precision. Icy needles poured from the sky, piercing through the heavy darkness as streaks of lightning fractured the clouds like veins of fire in stone. The waves surged higher now, violent and breathless, licking at his bare ankles with frigid tongues. Each step forward sent up sprays of seawater, numbing him further, and the wind—that cruel northern wind—howled around him, threading itself through his hair and freezing the strands into brittle, frosted cords. It seemed to guide him, possessively, toward whatever end it had decided was his.
The rain carved invisible wounds into what little skin was exposed, and the sea, heaving in agony, mirrored the ache in his chest with its dull, mournful gray. The water wasn’t just cold—it was alive with sorrow, crashing and folding in on itself like it, too, had something to grieve.
His oversized sweatshirt clung to him, soaked through and flapping violently with each gust, a chaotic metronome beating in time with the urgency of his steps. The zipper hung useless, open at the front, revealing a glimpse of his hollow chest and the shivering curve of his collarbones. Snow-colored strands of hair, wild and heavy with rain, fell across his forehead in untamed swirls, blurring his vision and stinging his eyes.
The moonlight—what little filtered through the storm—found his skin and made it glow with an otherworldly pallor. Beneath that cold glow, he looked almost translucent, as though the world were slowly trying to erase him. His lips, pale and cracked, let out shallow breaths that turned instantly into pale clouds, which burst softly against the bridge of his nose—now tinged a faint rose from the cold. Still, he didn’t turn back. Not once.
He was unspeakably tired. The kind of tired that lived in the marrow of his bones, in the tremble of his knees, in the aching collapse of his breath as it caught against the raw walls of his throat. Every step up that merciless incline felt heavier than the last, as though gravity itself had turned against him. His legs threatened to buckle beneath the weight of it all—of the night, the storm, the thoughts—but he pressed on, each movement a quiet act of defiance. Bitter tears blurred his vision, clinging to his lashes before dissolving into the rain, indistinguishable from the sky’s own weeping.
He remembered the promise—no, the silent vow—he had made to himself. It had not been spoken aloud, because that would have made it real. Instead, it had lived quietly in the corners of his heart, growing roots in the silence. A vow born from longing, desperation, and an icy desire that had begun to feel like the only thing still certain.
The truth was, he had been unraveling for a long time.
For months now, maybe longer, something inside him had begun to drift—slowly at first, then like a tether snapping all at once. His mind, once sharp and sensitive, had started to slip away from the world around him. He would watch his own life like a scene playing out behind fogged glass, unable to reach through and touch it. The performances, the conversations, the smiles—they all felt borrowed. As if someone else had written the script, and he was just mouthing the lines.
So, he had created an alternate life. Quietly. Privately. One where he didn’t have to flinch at every headline or brace himself for every backhanded compliment, every word laced with saccharine venom from people who claimed to adore him. His “supporters”—their praise always came tangled in conditions, their admiration poisoned by scrutiny and the sharp edge of expectation. Even love, when offered, came with weight. With price.
In that imaginary life he’d built inside his mind, there was no performance. No stage. No judgement. Just stillness. Just peace.
There were days when he wished he had chosen differently.
Sometimes, late at night, when the world fell silent and his thoughts grew loud, he regretted ever chasing the dream of singing. That passion—once a fire burning brightly inside his chest—had become something colder, more complicated. That moment, nine years ago, when his hand shook slightly as he signed that thin slip of paper, full of promises and clauses and blind hope… he hadn’t known then that he was signing away more than just time. He hadn’t known that contract would cost him his sense of safety, his privacy, his self-worth.
He hadn’t realized he was offering himself as a target.
From the moment he debuted, he had become cannon fodder for strangers—strangers who projected their own dissatisfaction onto him, onto his beloved members, turning their bitterness into sharp weapons. Their words, typed quickly and carelessly, carried more venom than they would ever understand. And despite his efforts—his heart laid bare in every lyric, every note sung with trembling sincerity—it never felt like enough. No matter how much he gave, someone always wanted more.
And yet, he had endured it. For years.
Now, the cliff stood before him like a final crescendo. He could see its edge just ahead, stark against the black canvas of the storm-ridden sky. His limbs ached from the climb, and his breath came in short, uneven bursts. One foot in front of the other, he reached the edge—slowly, reverently, as though approaching something sacred.
He looked down.
Far below, the sea boiled and roared, its waves bruised and black, crashing over themselves in a fit of endless rage. The rocks glistened beneath the water’s lashings, jagged and hungry. The wind screamed past his ears, as if trying to pull him back or push him forward—he couldn't quite tell.
His eyes shimmered, catching a reflection of the moon’s fractured light. But it wasn’t fear that flickered there. It was something quieter. Sadder. A final acceptance. This… this was where his path had always been leading. Not because he hadn’t fought—he had—but because the weariness had become a second skin. Because peace, real peace, had never seemed so close.
There were moments—quiet, bitter ones—when he wished he could become the ocean itself.
Not for its beauty, but for its rage. Its might. Its unapologetic vastness. When the weight of hatred and the sting of injustice crushed his chest and left him breathless, he longed to be like those waves: untouchable, wild, fearless. To rise and crash with no need for permission. To roar without consequence.
Instead, he had to swallow his cries and soften his steps, because the world demanded a gentler version of him. One they could shape, mold, critique, adore, and discard. But deep down, he knew there was more inside him—storms just as fierce as the sea’s, silenced by politeness and fear.
Above, the moon had watched him from the very start—distant, unblinking, eternal. It trailed his path like a silent witness, casting its pale glow on the young man who ran as if trying to outrun his own shadow. From its perch in the obsidian sky, it almost seemed to judge him, or perhaps pity him. After all, how often did it see a figure like his—a beloved voice of a generation—sprinting into the darkness as though something sacred was chasing him?
The rain, relentless and cold, tapped against the back of his neck with mechanical cruelty, like a clock counting down. It stung where his skin was exposed, where exhaustion had cracked his defenses. The sky above him showed no mercy, only mirrored what churned inside him: a storm without calm.
And still, he kept going.
A few stray pebbles tumbled from beneath his shoes, clicking softly as they bounced down the cliffside, swallowed seconds later by the ink-black waters below. He exhaled quietly—not out of fear, but from the heaviness pressing down on his chest, that old familiar ache that made even the smallest movements feel monumental.
Without urgency, he lowered himself into a crouch, knees trembling slightly beneath him. His fingers, pale and thin in the cold, reached for the worn laces of his shoes. He undid them slowly, tenderly, as if the ritual deserved reverence—as if by freeing his feet, he could begin to unburden his soul. The knots loosened without resistance, slipping apart beneath the practiced touch of hands that had always known how to be gentle, even in a world that so often wasn’t.
He stepped out of them.
The soles of his bare feet met the cold, damp loam, slick with rain and glimmering faintly beneath the fractured moonlight. The earth was soft, uneven, almost tender. It grounded him, and yet, the vastness in front of him threatened to undo all sense of grounding at all.
His gaze lifted—heavy, hollow—and settled on the endless stretch of sea below.
He had always loved the ocean.
Even as a child, it had captivated him. There was something sacred about its duality—how it could lull the world with stillness one moment and erupt into fury the next. It reminded him of himself, perhaps. Beautiful from afar, misunderstood up close. Capable of depth so profound it frightened those who dared to look too long.
To him, the sea had never been just water. It was feeling. It was freedom. It was a mirror.
And standing there, drenched and shaking, he could almost believe it was waiting for him.
In that moment—feet buried in the trembling earth, eyes fixed on the restless sea—a memory rose to the surface like a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
It was of Sodam, his sister, her voice like a thread of warmth in one of his coldest relapses. He could still picture her by the side of his bed, her hand quietly resting on his wrist, her presence steady as he drifted in and out of sleep. He hadn’t said much that day—he couldn’t—but she stayed anyway, guarding the silence like it was something sacred.
And then, as his breathing slowed and the room blurred into the hum of tired thoughts, he had heard her voice, soft and aching, spill into the dimness with words that reached him like echoes through water:
“When hard times come, you only have two options: you can fight the waves, or you can ride them. You can spend all your energy wishing things were different, wishing people and situations would change. You can wear yourself out wrestling with reality, trying to undo what already is… or you can let go, and ride the waves.”
“You can accept that life offers them to you—some will be radiant and light, carrying you gently. But others… others will drown you just by looking at them. Still, they come. They always come. Little brother,” her voice had trembled then, just a little, “I so hope you’ll learn to ride your majestic waves.”
At the time, those words had nestled in his half-conscious mind like a lullaby, forgotten before fully understood.
Now, they ached.
Because he had tried to ride them. He had. But some waves weren’t just tall—they were relentless. Some weren’t meant to be ridden, only survived. And he had survived for so long.
But tonight… tonight he wasn’t sure he could anymore.
By now, the tears traced uninterrupted lines down the sharp, sculpted planes of his face, leaving behind glistening trails that burned cold against his winter-bitten skin. The wind was merciless, kissing his cheeks until they stung raw. His nose, reddened by the icy air, twitched with every heavy breath, and he sniffled against the drop forming at the edge of one nostril, the smallest betrayal of the storm inside him. He rubbed his hands together, desperate for a flicker of warmth, but his palms met only the numbed resistance of flesh that had long given up on comfort.
He tilted his head upward, lips parted ever so slightly, eyes closing against the weight of the sky. The wind moved across his face like fingers brushing a piano in mourning—soft, deliberate, and aching with restraint. In that stillness, he looked almost peaceful, as though he were listening for something in the clouds.
Not long before leaving home—before stepping into this sleepless night and its silent chorus of grief—he had typed out a message. Hasty, fragmented, but careful in its own way. It was meant for the person who had always been there—his anchor when the currents pulled too hard, the voice on the other end when his own failed. Sodam, his sister. His lifeline.
He couldn’t be direct. He couldn’t write what he truly meant to say—the fear of what it would do to her stopped his fingers every time. So instead, he wrote in veils and metaphors, cloaking the truth in riddles he hoped only she could read. He gave her enough to know, to understand, to feel him slipping—without giving her the burden of certainty.
He opened his eyes slowly, just as a few sharp drops of rain slipped past his lashes and burned against his irises. He didn't flinch. He welcomed the sting—it grounded him, briefly, in a body that otherwise felt distant and hollowed out. Then, without rush, he reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out his phone one last time. The cold metal bit against his fingers, but it didn’t matter. What he was about to face now went far beyond anything the wind or water could do to him.
The screen lit up beneath his trembling hands, painting pale light on his face as he navigated shakily to the last conversation he’d had. His eyes locked onto the familiar chat thread, onto the name that weighed most heavily on his heart: Sodam.
The first message stared back at him like a confession written in blood.
Noona, I don’t want to make any more plans for the future.
He remembered lingering over that sentence for what felt like an eternity—fingers hovering, hovering, retreating—then typing and deleting, retyping, stalling. It was a single line, but behind it was a storm of pain he could no longer articulate. He’d tried to compress all his confusion, all his fatigue and fear, into those few words. A quiet scream, disguised in simplicity.
Her reply came quickly. Jongie, what do you mean?
That name. That soft, familiar nickname carved from love and childhood, so gentle it shattered him. The moment he read it, his vision blurred. His lashes caught the tears, heavy and salted, until they overflowed in silence. Just that one word— Jongie —and the whole world seemed to crumble.
It’s all useless. He typed that next, barely able to control his thumbs. The cold made him shake, yes—but so did the terror of knowing this was real now. This wasn’t a thought in the dark or a line in a journal. It was action. It was truth.
Jonghyun, are you okay? He almost laughed. Was he okay? He couldn’t remember what that even meant. He stared at the words, mouth half open, chest hollow. If he were okay, he wouldn’t be standing on the edge of the world, soaked in rain and ghosts.
Noona, I’ve been feeling so detached from reality lately.
That was the closest he could come to telling the truth. It felt like he had been walking through a fog for months—through a version of his life that looked real but felt counterfeit. A filtered photograph of existence. Applause, flashing lights, laughter, eyes on him. But none of it reached him. He’d been screaming into a crowded room, and no one ever heard.
Tears now poured freely, indistinguishable from the rain as they carved slow rivers down his pale cheeks. They soaked into the edges of his collar, dripping from his chin to the dirt. The wind howled, but his grief was louder.
Jongie, where are you?
Where was he? The question floated on the screen like smoke. He looked up, past the cracked clouds where the moon had finally peeked through, as if even it was searching for him. He listened to the sea, angry and insistent below. Where was he?
I feel so lost inside myself.
And that was it. That was the unmovable truth. He was lost in the echoing rooms of his own mind—a stranger within the walls of a house built by others, made to entertain, to perform, to endure. Every morning, the mirror gave him back a face he no longer recognized—just a sculpted image shaped by expectations, masks, projections. He had become everyone else’s idea of who he was supposed to be. And now there was nothing left underneath.
Jonghyun, you’re starting to seriously worry me. Her words were firm, loving, threaded with desperation. Sodam—always his haven, always his voice of calm. She had seen him through every breakdown, every crack in the glass. She had held him in the quiet when no one else had noticed him fading.
And still, he had failed her.
Why don’t people understand that scars exist even though you can’t see them?
He had asked that of the world so many times. His skin bore none of the damage, but his heart was slashed and bruised, his soul swollen with wounds no one could photograph. And because no one could see them, they assumed he was fine. Smiling, singing, shining. But the ache never left.
He watched her next message come in.
Jonghyun, I think each of us must go through something that completely destroys us before we understand who we really are.
A sob caught in his throat. A violent, aching breath that escaped him as if the message itself had knocked the wind from his lungs. Her words stabbed at something buried deep—the part of him that still wanted answers. That still wanted to understand.
Do you think I’ll ever come to understand who I actually am? He sent the question before he could stop himself. His fingers hovered over the phone, his eyes swollen and red, his thoughts swirling with everything he had been, everything he wasn’t allowed to be.
Of course, Jongie.
There it was again. Jongie. A word full of laughter and scraped knees, of whispered secrets and games in the summer sun. It carried with it the entire weight of their childhood—a time when the world was kinder, when he was simply a boy with dreams, not a man pulled apart by them.
Now tell me, where are you?
He blinked through the blur. His toes curled slightly in the cold earth. The sea still crashed far below, singing its ancient lullaby. Where was he?
He hesitated, then typed, On our rock.
The only place that had ever felt like a refuge. The place where they had played, barefoot and breathless, long before contracts and costumes and cameras. A place that once smelled like salt and freedom, not endings. A place that had held joy, and now, by some cruel poetry, was about to hold his final sorrow.
Tears slipped silently down again, this time not from panic or pain—but from mourning. Mourning the memory of what this place used to mean. Mourning that the happiest corner of his past had become the setting for this irrevocable goodbye.
He stood in silence. The earth, the sky, the sea—all bore witness.
As his eyes lingered on the final message he had sent—those last fragile words that clung to the screen like a final breath—something inside him seized. He stared at it for a moment longer, fingers tightening around the cold device until his knuckles whitened. Then, without hesitation but with the heaviness of resignation, he drew his arm back and hurled the phone into the void.
The motion was sharp but strangely graceful—like a final act in a silent play. The device sailed into the night, slicing through the rain-soaked air before vanishing into the black abyss. For a fleeting moment, its glowing screen flickered mid-fall, casting one last ghostly light in the darkness—and then, nothing. The light went out, swallowed by the sea below, just as he longed to be.
It was the first gesture of erasure, the first step in his quiet vanishing. If he was going to disappear—truly, fully—then everything that tied him to the world had to go first. And so, he let it fall, the small piece of glass and metal that had once carried warmth, comfort, connection. He let it fall like a severed lifeline.
A soft breath escaped his lips—not quite a sigh, not quite a cry—and he stood still, listening to the silence that followed the splash. It felt like the world had agreed to let him go.
He clenched his fists tightly at his sides, knuckles bone-white, as though bracing himself against the world’s final judgment. His throat contracted in a harsh swallow, thick with the ache of unspoken words and everything he no longer had the strength to say. Above him, the moon bore silent witness, casting its cold gaze through the curtain of clouds, its pale eye never blinking.
Fresh rain—relentless and unsympathetic—began to fall again, threading rivulets across the sharp planes of his face. It ran like silver ink over his milk-pale skin, tracing the same paths as his tears until there was no telling which belonged to the sky and which to his sorrow. His eyes shimmered beneath the weight of it, glassy and blinking slowly, as though even keeping them open now was a labor.
A dreadful guilt slithered beneath his skin like oil, slow and poisonous. It crept around his ribs and coiled around his bones, wrapping itself in secret places where no one could see. It tickled his dormant muscles with cruel tenderness and reached its wicked fingers into his chest, where it gripped his heart and squeezed mercilessly. A low, strangled groan escaped his lips—soft but raw, like a dying breath caught in his throat.
He stood there trembling, the wind clawing at him, rain drenching his soul as much as his skin. For a moment, just a moment, his resolve wavered—a quiet flicker of doubt, an ache of hesitation. But no. Not now. He couldn’t afford to change his mind. Not when he had come this far. Not when turning back would mean dragging this unbearable weight for another lifetime. If he faltered, everything—the silence, the pain, the goodbye—would have been for nothing.
Suddenly, her face appeared—that young, radiant face that had always smiled at him with unwavering tenderness. It came to him like a flicker of light behind closed eyes, piercing through the gloom of his thoughts. The memory of her was so vivid it hurt. And as it bloomed in his mind, the tears surged once more, heavier now, spilling down his cheeks in unstoppable waves.
He remembered.
It was only a few days earlier.
Sodam had found him collapsed on the cold tile floor of his bathroom, his body sprawled awkwardly like a forgotten shadow. He looked—to her and to himself—like a discarded shell: pale, still, barely breathing. His limbs lay slack, long arms resting beside him like withered branches. His eyes had been half-lidded, dulled to the point of lifelessness, and his chest rose and fell with a shallow rhythm that frightened her.
She had cried out his name, dropped to her knees without hesitation, and cradled his heavy head in her lap. Her skinny legs trembled beneath his weight, but her hands were steady—those gentle, familiar hands that had so often soothed his pain. Fingers soft and warm threaded through his damp, white-streaked hair, and she stroked his scalp with the infinite care only an older sister could offer.
“It's okay, Jongie,” she whispered, as if her words could summon him back from the distant place his mind had retreated to. Her voice was fragile, nearly soundless, but he’d heard it—muffled and distant, like a lullaby underwater. Still, it reached him.
“Time goes by,” she murmured, and he remembered the way her fingers moved with the rhythm of her breath. “It’s just slower when you’re hurting. But if you try to live it, try to breathe through it... someday it will start to get better.”
He wanted to respond. He remembered that too—how he’d struggled to move his lips, to give her something, anything. But his body had already begun to sink into sleep’s cruel arms, pulled under by the numbness that crept like fog through his limbs.
He never got to answer her. Never got to tell her he was sorry. That he was trying. That he loved her more than he knew how to say.
And now here he was—standing at the end of the world with her voice echoing in his mind, soft as sea mist, breaking him all over again.
He drew in a sharp, trembling breath that rattled through his lungs like wind through brittle branches. Then, slowly—as if every step carried the weight of centuries—he advanced. The world around him seemed suspended in stillness. No sound but the low growl of the sea and the hiss of the wind circling his frame. When he reached the edge, he paused, eyes narrowing against the blur of tears and stormlight, and cast one last glance into the chasm below.
The abyss did not frighten him. It welcomed him.
Gathering what little strength remained inside his fragile chest, he whispered a word—a quiet, broken apology—to no one and everyone. A final offering to the night. The wind tore it away before it could settle, carrying it off into the void, like a prayer swallowed by the silence of God.
Then, he let go.
The earth vanished beneath him. Time, too. His stomach churned as his body dropped through the dark, but no scream escaped his throat. His voice, like so many things, had deserted him long ago. Eyelids clenched, fists drawn tight at his sides, he surrendered to gravity—not with resistance, but with resignation.
He did not cry out. He simply fell.
Fell through the mist. Through the salt and the sky. Through the pain, through memory, through the weight of years. Down, down—as if the sea itself had been calling him home all along.
His body remained still, suspended like driftwood as it struck the surface of the sea with a resounding, unforgiving slap. For a moment, the world tilted. A shallow gasp escaped his lips—soft, fleeting—before the ocean wrapped its frigid arms around him and began to pull him downward, slow and certain. He could not fight it. He did not want to.
The salt stung his eyes sharply, searing into his vision until all that remained were smears of movement and shadows. His limbs refused to respond—as if they no longer belonged to him—and his breath, already fractured, seemed to dissolve into the dark. The seabed grew nearer with every heartbeat he could barely feel.
He surrendered himself to it all.
His skin, pale and fragile, had gone numb. The cold swallowed his nerve endings whole, and in its place came a strange kind of stillness. Only his white hair moved—loose strands curling like pale ink in dark water, fluttering gently against his neck, lifted and tugged by the currents as if reluctant to let him go completely.
His lungs began to cry out, pleading silently for air. He could feel the water crawling over his tongue now—a cold, metallic presence that settled in his throat like the beginning of a goodbye. But he resisted the urge to rise. He forced himself to remain beneath, where no voice could reach him and no pain could find its name.
Above him, the storm still raged. He could barely hear it anymore—only the dull, steady thunder of waves crashing against the cliffside, and something softer still: the whispers of the water around him, ancient and intimate, curling into his ears like secrets only the lost could understand.
And in the stillness, in the silence that followed—he knew.
He had made the right choice.
The sea enchants.
It lulls and seduces. It kills. It frightens. It heals. It weeps and sings and rages. Sometimes it recedes and vanishes into silence, disguising itself as something harmless—a still lake, a quiet mirror. Other times, it swells into fury, births storms, swallows ships whole, buries treasure, and offers up sorrow. It gives no answers. It only listens. It is wise. It is cruel. It is kind. It is beyond us.
But—as Jonghyun learned, and as his sister would later come to understand—the sea calls . And once it does, ignoring it becomes impossible.
Moments later, a figure broke through the darkness—small, breathless, desperate. She reached the edge of the cliff with shoes skidding against the soaked earth and eyes already wide with fear. And there, adrift in the black swell, was the shape of him—a pale blur on the water, unmoving.
A scream tore from her lungs and split the sky.
It cut through the rain. Through the wind. Through the night. It was the sound of something shattering, something final. Kim Jonghyun was gone. Her little brother—the boy with the wild laugh and hair like snow, the man who had always worn his pain like a secret beneath the brightness of his smile—would never come back to her.
He had surrendered. He had succumbed to the unbearable weight the Universe had forced him to carry, and it had proven too much.
But death—as cruel as it is—can also be a release.
People who cannot live do not fear life. They love it—fiercely, quietly, in ways that others cannot begin to grasp. And perhaps that’s why they are drawn to the end: not because they want to die, but because they can no longer bear to stand outside of a life they love but cannot reach.
Jonghyun did not want to disappear.
He only wanted to live—truly live—without drowning inside his own mind, without suffocating beneath the weight of his unspoken sadness. But life, in its relentless unpredictability, betrayed him too many times. It twisted his joy, mocked his kindness, clawed at his hope. And in the end, the call of peace was louder than the promise of another day.
So, he ran—into the salt and the dark and the cold arms of the sea.
And now, he rests.
Not because he didn’t love the world, but because the world, in all its beauty, became too painful to love from within.