Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ER was always busy at night, but tonight it felt heavier somehow. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights, too bright and too cold. Maybe it was the ceaseless murmur of urgent footsteps, curt orders, and the buzz of machines. Or maybe it was the way Seulgi’s shoulder throbbed. Dull and insistent like a memory refusing to fade.

But more than anything, it was the hospital itself. She hated hospitals. Always had. They smelled of antiseptic and quiet desperation. Too many nights spent delivering bad news to weeping families, too many crime scenes ending in operating rooms. Hospitals reminded her of everything she couldn’t control, everything she’d failed to fix. Just like her own life. And she hated the reminder.

She’d been through worst injuries on the force. A broken wrist in a bar fight gone south, a cracked rib from a car chase, a stab wound during a domestic call that spiraled. But tonight felt different. The cut on her shoulder was shallow, barely serious, and yet it left her rattled. Uneasy. There was a tight, crawling feeling in her chest she couldn’t explain, like her body knew something her mind hadn’t caught up to. And no matter how much  she try to downplay it, it wouldn’t go away

The nurse who’d cleaned her wound, bubbly, too cheerful, had insisted she head to the ER for stitches.

“We’ll get you patched up in no time,” she chirped. Seulgi wanted to groan. Instead, she nodded and tried not to grimace.

She sat stiffly on the narrow hospital cot, shoulder burning, a sterile white sheet crinkling beneath her. The curtain surrounding her little square of space was thin, offering only the illusion of privacy. Every few seconds, a voice echoed through the hallway. A name, a command, a groan. Seulgi breathed through her nose and reminded herself this wouldn’t take long. In and out. That’s all she needed.

The curtain swished open with a practiced flick.

Seulgi turned at the sound. Nothing could’ve prepared her at that moment. There stood someone she couldn’t forget. Someone she waited for so long.

Yoo Jaeyi.

The name struck like a thunderclap, loud and sudden in her chest. For a second, Seulgi forgot the ache in her shoulder, forgot where she was. Her world narrowing to the figure in front of her. It’s Jaeyi.

Her Jaeyi.

Dr. Yoo now, apparently. Clipboard in hand. Pristine white coat. Dark hair pulled back in a clean ponytail. Her expression was unreadable. Blank in that way only doctors can manage.

Seulgi’s breath caught. Her brain scrambled to catch up, to piece together what she was seeing. She hadn’t seen Jaeyi in nearly for what? Five years? But she looks all the same. Like she just saw her yesterday. Like she was gone for a day.

Jaeyi didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. “I’m Dr. Yoo,” she said evenly. “I’ll be stitching your wound.”

Seulgi stared. Her heart beat too loudly, too fast.

“Jaeyi?” The name escaped before she could stop it. As soft as a prayer and just as desperate.

Jaeyi’s gaze flicked toward her, calm and unbothered. “Dr. Yoo,” she corrected, her voice like glass. “Please sit.”

Seulgi was too stunned she haven’t realized she was now standing up. “Right.”

There was no recognition in Jaeyi’s eyes. Or if there was, she buried it deep. Too deep for Seulgi to find. Seulgi swallowed hard, trying to regain control.

“So, this is how it’s gonna be? Act like we’re strangers?” Seulgi said, the words slipping out before she could stop them. Her voice was quieter than she intended, but the frustration and confusion seeped through.

Jaeyi looked up at her. She didn’t seem fazed by the question, nor did she seem to care. “Aren’t we?” Jaeyi responded. “Right now, you’re just another patient and tonight, I’ve got plenty of those.”

It felt like a slap to the face. Seulgi's voice hitched, trying to keep herself composed. A rush of heat flooded her chest.

Jaeyi then reached for gauze and antiseptic, her tone still sounded clinical “How did this happen?”

Seulgi blinked. The question felt ordinary, but coming from Jaeyi, it landed like a test she hadn’t prepared for. “Climbed over a fence during a foot pursuit,” she muttered. “Didn’t clear it clean.”

Jaeyi didn’t look up. “So you impaled yourself on it.”

“Scraped,” Seulgi corrected. “Mostly.”

A beat of silence stretched between them, filled only by the sound of antiseptic being uncapped. It was absurd. It was surreal. The woman who once knew her body better than anyone else, who used to trace Seulgi’s spine with reverence, who used to whisper promises against her skin, was now pretending she was just somebody else.

Seulgi couldn’t help herself. The words came out in a low, tight voice with a disbelief chuckle “You’ve got to be kidding me. Are we really doing this?”

Jaeyi didn’t flinch. “The earlier you let it sink, the better for the both of us.” Her voice remained detached. Like they had never shared anything between them.

The words hit harder than the antiseptic swab she was now using to clean Seulgi’s wound. Seulgi fought to keep her breathing steady, but her hands trembled slightly, the sting from the injury now secondary to the sting of rejection.

“Sink exactly what?” Seulgi chuckled bitterly. “that I meant nothing to you?”

Jaeyi paused, her eyes flicking up to meet Seulgi’s. There was a flash of something in her eyes. Something that almost looked like regret. But it was gone too quickly for Seulgi to be sure.

“Exactly,” Jaeyi said, her tone still even, no remorse. “Anyway, if you want your shoulder fixed, I suggest you sit still and let me do my job. That’s all I’m here for.”

Seulgi’s chest tightened. The words, all the things she’d wanted to say, swirled in her mind, but she couldn’t find the right ones. She felt small. Like her entire existence had been boiled down to this situation. She didn’t know how to deal with this version of Jaeyi. The Jaeyi who seemed like a stranger. The one who was cold and unaffected.

“You could at least pretend to care.” Seulgi whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

Jaeyi’s hands were steady as she worked on the wound. She didn’t say anything at first, Seulgi thought she wouldn’t.

But then Jaeyi spoke. “I do care,” she said softly. “But I can’t afford to care about you. Not anymore.”

The words stung, but Seulgi wasn’t ready to back down. Her stubbornness, the same stubbornness that had carried her through years on the force, flared up. She wouldn’t let Jaeyi off that easily.

“You know what?” Seulgi said, her voice hard now, cutting through the air between them. “You can’t just act like we were nothing. Jaeyi we haven’t seen each other for five years. Five years.”

Jaeyi didn’t respond. She just finished wrapping the wound, her hands slow and precise. Seulgi couldn’t tell if it was a deliberate attempt to distance herself or if Jaeyi truly couldn’t bring herself to speak.

Jaeyi stood back, peeling off her gloves with a practiced flick of her wrists. The latex snapped sharply in the quiet, punctuating the end of her task. She disposed of them, the motion precise. Then she looked at Seulgi, but only briefly. A glance. Quick. Hasty. Almost like she didn’t dare to let it linger.

“You’ll be fine,” Jaeyi said, voice sliding back into its armor of professionalism. “Just keep it clean. Don’t make me see you again unless you’re dying.”

The words landed like a slap. No, worst. Like a closing door with no handle on the inside. Final. Sealed.

Seulgi sat frozen on the exam table, her hand resting against her bandaged shoulder. The sting of the wound had dulled to a throbbing ache, but the real pain, God, the real pain, was elsewhere. It bloomed in her chest, slow and suffocating, spreading like bruises under skin.

She had heard a thousand harsh words in her life. At the orphanage, on the streets, in the force, even in past arguments with Jaeyi. But none had ever landed like this. None had ever sounded like a plea dressed up as cruelty.

Jaeyi turned away too quickly. Too quickly. As if leaving fast enough might outrun what she’d just said. But her jaw was tight, and her breath caught up on her throat as she reached for the chart at the foot of the bed. Her back to Seulgi now. Her eyes fixed too hard on the page. Because if she looked aagan, if she saw the way Seulgi’s expression had fallen in on itself, the way she was breaking without a sound, she might falter. And she couldn’t afford to falter.

Seulgi didn’t look away. Not once. Even if she felt like crying. Her eyes followed Jaeyi’s every move, searching for something. Anything that betrayed the woman beneath the mask. Something to prove she wasn’t the only one affected.

“Maybe next time, don’t be so quick to forget people.”

The words came out low, rough with disbelief and longing. Seulgi didn’t even realize she was going to say them until they were already in the air. But she didn’t take them back. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Jaeyi stilled. Not dramatically, not visibly, but enough that Seulgi noticed. Her hand paused halfway through scribbling on the chart, her pen hovering just a little too long. Then, slowly, she turn around. Her eyes shifted, locking onto Seulgi’s for the briefest moment.

And there it was— something. A flicker. Not quite pain. Not quite regret. But something old and aching and raw that hadn’t been completely buried. Something that lived in the lines around Jaeyi’s eyes and the way her mouth pressed tightly shut. But it was gone almost as quickly as it had come, shuttered behind the same practiced calm that had greeted her.

“You should have learned to forget by now, Seulgi.”

Seulgi felt it all at once. The heaviness of unfinished business. Of all the things unsaid. All the versions of this moment they never got to have. All the possibilities that had burned up in silence and time and distance.

She didn’t respond right away.

Part of her had expected Jaeyi to say something like that eventually. To lash out, to shut the door in her face. But not this fast. Not this sharp. And not in a voice that used to whisper love into her ears.

It hit exactly where she feared it would.

Her jaw clenched. She looked away, reaching for her jacket draped over her thighs. Her movements felt slow, like she was wading through water. Her legs swung down from the cot with quiet resolve, her feet landing soundlessly on the cold tile. She stood, though every muscle begged her to stay still. To leave it. To walk out and let the moment die.

But she couldn’t.

Something surged within her. A small, stubborn kind of strength. Maybe it was anger. Maybe hatred. Maybe hope. Maybe just the part of her that refused to be pushed aside like she never mattered. Like they didn’t matter. She didn’t know. She only knew she couldn’t walk away like this. Not when she felt that the Jaeyi she knows is still there, beneath all the coldness. Still the same heartbeat, buried under years and silence.

“Yeah, No.” she said, her voice low and scratchy, the weight of it hanging between them. “Whatever it takes to remind you who we were and who we still could be,”

Jaeyi didn’t move. She didn’t cut Seulgi’s word. Instead, she waited for her to finish.

Seulgi walked toward the curtain, each step slow, like she was moving through a memory instead of a hospital. Her fingers brushed the edge of the privacy partition, but she stopped just short of pulling it open.

She turned her head slightly, just enough to let her voice carry back to the woman standing behind her.

“I’d do it all.”

Chapter Text

Seulgi didn’t remember when exactly it started. This quiet, humiliating ritual of hers.

She only knew she couldn’t stop.

At first, it was just a cup of coffee. Not even a special one, just something warm she picked up on a whim after a night shift, her hands still smelling faintly of gunpowder and hand sanitizer. She left it outside the staff room with a sticky note that simply said: For a long day. No name. No pressure.

Then it became a box of chestnut pastries from the bakery near the precinct. Jaeyi used to love them, used to lick the powdered sugar from her fingertips with an absentminded kind of joy that always made Seulgi stare too long. She left those, too. Quietly. Anonymously. But Jaeyi wasn’t stupid. She knew.

Next came a packet of heating pads, neatly wrapped with another note in her neat, restrained handwriting: You used to get sore shoulders. Just in case. She didn’t sign that one either, but the familiarity in the message was unmistakable.

She didn’t expect anything in return. Not thanks. Not conversation. She wasn’t naive. Just maybe a glance. Maybe for Jaeyi to look up, even just once, and see her. Not through her. See her.

But Jaeyi didn’t even give her that.

And yet Seulgi kept coming. Day after day, like clockwork. Always hovering at the edge of the ER. Never in the way, never demanding attention. She knew her place, so much it hurts.

Sometimes she brought flowers. Sometimes bags of sliced fruit. Once, she handed off an umbrella to a passing intern and told her to give it to Jaeyi because it was raining too hard, and she remembered how Jaeyi always forgot hers. When the umbrella ended up abandoned on a bench hours later, soaked and unopened, Seulgi quietly picked it up and took it home.

Some nights she waited past midnight, sitting quietly in the hallway while Jaeyi performed another marathon surgery. She never asked for updates. She just sat there, her presence invisible but constant. When Jaeyi finally appeared through the glass doors, bone-tired and barely lifting her gaze, Seulgi would slip out without a word—just a quiet exhale of relief. She’s okay. She’s still here.

One morning, Seulgi caught a glimpse of Jaeyi by the locker bays, illuminated by the pale blue light of dawn. She looked hollow. The kind of tired that no sleep could fix. Her face was drawn, her mouth set in that rigid, unreadable line Seulgi used to kiss away.

Later that day, Seulgi left a scarf hanging on the hook outside her locker. Soft wool with blue and yellow checkered pattern. The same kind Jaeyi used to steal from her during cold walks home, pretending it was hers all along. This time, there was no note. No explanation.

There was no point.

Jaeyi would know who it was from.

And if she didn’t, that was fine, too.

She heard the nurses whisper sometimes.

She’s here again? God, it’s sad.

Some of them had started to recognize her. One particularly kind resident offered her a coffee and asked if she needed help. Seulgi just smiled, quiet and patient, like she didn’t hear it. Like she hadn’t already heard it all in her own head a thousand times.

But she smiled anyway. Not because it didn’t hurt. It did, in ways she couldn’t name. But the thought of knowing Jaeyi had left again without saying anything, just like before, terrified her more than the humiliation. So she stayed soft. Gentle. Palms always open. Never pressing. Never asking.

She never once asked why Jaeyi left. Never once said: You disappeared. You didn’t even give me a goodbye. She figured if Jaeyi had wanted her to know, she would’ve told her.

But she didn’t.

And Seulgi kept showing up anyway.

She didn’t know what she was trying to prove. Maybe nothing. Maybe she just couldn’t stand the silence. Maybe she was trying to rewind time by sheer force of presence, trying to anchor herself in Jaeyi’s world again, even if it was only in the margins.

Maybe, selfishly, she thought if she stayed long enough, if she was kind enough, if she loved quietly enough, something in Jaeyi would soften. That the cold, impossible wall would crack. That the girl she once knew, the one who used to fall asleep with her head in Seulgi’s lap, who used to press her forehead to Seulgi’s chest just to listen to her heartbeat, would remember.

Remember them.

Remember her.

But it was always the same.

Distant glances. Brief, obligatory nods in the hallway. And silence. Heavy, deliberate silence that spoke louder than any cruel word ever could. A silence that made it clear: You’re not wanted here. You don’t belong anymore. Stop trying.

But Seulgi couldn’t. Not when her hands still remembered the shape of loving her. Not when every day without her still ached like a fresh wound. She told herself it was okay. That she didn’t need anything back.

She told herself a lot of things.

And none of them were true.

Until that night.

It was late. Raining. The kind of rain that felt personal. Slicing sideways through the wind, soaking through clothes, clinging to skin like grief. The city was quiet in that way it only got past midnight, muffled under water, the streets empty but for the low hum of ambulances and far-off sirens.

Seulgi stood by the staff entrance of the hospital, hunched slightly, her jacket already soaked through. Her hands clutched a small thermos container wrapped in a towel to keep it warm. Homemade rice porridge. She’d woken up early that morning to make it, tasted it twice, then reheated it again an hour ago before coming here. She didn’t know if Jaeyi even liked it anymore.

She didn’t care. Not really.

The staff doors hissed open.

Jaeyi emerged into the rain, her white coat buttoned all the way up, her steps brisk and precise, shoulders squared like she was still fighting the weight of the ER behind her. Her hair was still pulled back tight in that same clean knot, not a strand out of place.

She stopped the moment she saw Seulgi. Not in surprise. She never looked surprised anymore. Just weary. Like Seulgi was a migraine she couldn’t shake.

That look, that soft, dismissive shake of her head, made Seulgi’s heart sink before either of them said a word.

Still, she offered a small smile. Soft. Hopeful.

Stupid.

“You’ve barely eaten this week,” Seulgi said, her voice gentle, barely heard over the rain. “I made some porridge. Just thought maybe—”

Jaeyi cut her off with a breath. Not even a word. Just a long, dragged-out exhale that sounded like she was scraping it from the bottom of her lungs. Exhausted. Fed up.

“Seulgi.”

Just her name. But it landed like a warning shot.

Still, Seulgi held out the container. Hands trembling slightly, though from the cold or something else, she couldn’t tell. “It’s warm,” she said again. “I just thought—”

“Stop,” Jaeyi said.

Her voice wasn’t loud. But like the lightning, it sliced through the air. Sharp and final. The kind of voice you use when you want someone to leave.

Seulgi flinched.

“I told you to stop coming.”

“No,” Seulgi said quietly, her voice catching in her throat. “You never said anything.”

That made Jaeyi pause but not in the way Seulgi hoped. There was no flicker of guilt, no apology curled beneath the silence. Just a subtle hardening in her expression. A flex of the jaw.

“And maybe that should’ve told you everything,” Jaeyi said.

The words lodged somewhere deep inside Seulgi, like a splinter too deep to pull out.

Still, she didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her fingers clenched tighter around the container.

“Why?” Jaeyi asked, voice barely above a whisper. “What is it you’re waiting for, Seulgi?”  her voice rising, not in volume but intensity. “For me to suddenly wake up and realize I miss you? To fall into your arms because you brought me some stupid soup?”

Seulgi opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve said anyway.

“You think this is noble?” Jaeyi continued, stepping forward. Not closer, not warmer, just more direct. “This thing you’re doing? It’s not. It’s pathetic.”

The word cut through her like a slap across the face.

Seulgi still didn’t speak. Didn’t step back.

“I didn’t leave because I stopped caring,” Jaeyi said, and for a moment her voice cracked. Barely, like a breath catching on glass. “I left because you were a weight I couldn’t carry anymore. I left because I realized we’re not worth fighting for. I left because I knew when to stop.”

She looked at Seulgi then, and it wasn’t just anger in her eyes, it was pity. Maybe even disgust. But worst of all: dismissal. Like Seulgi had already been erased, forgotten, irrelevant.

“Let that sink in.”

Seulgi’s hands were shaking now. She couldn’t tell if the container was warm anymore. Everything was numb.

“I—I just, I missed you,” she said.

She didn’t mean for it to come out like that. So bare, so young, so small. But it did. And it hung in the air between them, pathetic and unreturnable.

Jaeyi laughed then. A sharp, bitter thing. Not amused, resentful.

“Missing me,” she said, “isn’t a reason to drag me back into a past I buried.”

The silence that followed was devastating. Long. Heavy. The kind of silence that made you feel stupid for ever speaking in the first place. The rain filled it, hammering against the concrete, pooling at their feet.

Seulgi’s shoulders sagged. She looked down at the thermos in her hand. The steam was gone.

“I’m not trying to drag you back,” she whispered. “I just wanted you to know I’m still here. That it’s still me. That what I felt for you never changed.”

Jaeyi’s expression didn’t shift. Not even a blink.

“That’s not my problem,” she said.

And then she turned.

Walked away without hesitation. No glance back. No regret.

Seulgi stood there.

She didn’t follow. Didn’t call out.

The thermos in her hand had gone cold.

Carefully, like it mattered, she stepped to the stone bench and set it down. Her fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary. She was shaking now, all over, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she gasped for air. Trying to calm her nerves. An attempt to breathe for holding it for far too long.

Was she too persistent?

Did she mistake desperation for love? Pressure for care?

Had she pushed too hard for something that never wanted to be saved?

Probably.

But what hurt more was the quiet knowledge that it didn’t matter now.

Jaeyi has decided. It’s over between them.

And somehow, despite being the one left behind, she was the one who looked like she’d done something wrong.

Like she was the one who had to say sorry. It’s her complex talking and Jaeyi was right. It’s her problem.

Chapter Text

The expressway smelled of fuel and iron and burnt rubber.

Rain slicked the asphalt, pooling beneath crushed metal and broken glass. A tanker had lost control, plowing into a line of cars at the tunnel mouth. Eight vehicles tangled in a chaotic mess. Sirens echoed through the background. Smoke swirling upward. It was the kind of scene that nobody should be on the first place.

Seulgi gritted her teeth as she arrived, boots splashing through the puddled ground. The bandage on her shoulders itched where her wound hadn’t quite healed.

“Block eastbound traffic! We need clear lanes for medics!” she shouted. “Triage first and get tags on anyone breathing!”

She moved through the wreckage fast. Ducking into broken doors, scanning faces, checking pulses. Bloodied civilians clung to consciousness. Some didn’t. Her hands shook. Adrenaline boiling.

“He’s in here! Councilman Kim!”

Seulgi turned. Several officers were gathering around a mangled luxury car crumpled under a steel median beam. Inside, a suited man, semi-conscious, groaning. Blood ran from his temple.

“VIP,” Officer Nam Byeongjin muttered beside her. “Orders from up top say he gets priority evacuation”

Seulgi didn’t answer right away. Her eyes swept the scene. Two other victims specifically caught her attention. One woman with half her face burned. A kid, maybe fifteen, still strapped into the front seat of a totaled hatchback, barely breathing.

Her jaw clenched. “No.”

Officer Nam blinked. “No?”

“You heard me. He’s not the worst case here.”

Officer Nam’s voice dropped. “Seulgi. It’s a direct order. That man controls department budgets. He goes first.”

“Do you see that kid? And that woman? You want me to move him ahead of them because he has a name?”

Officer Nam hesitated. “We’re not paid to argue politics. We just follow—”

“I don’t follow unjust orders.”

Her voice cracked across the scene.

Nearby, responders froze mid-movement. A paramedic stopped threading an IV. A fireman paused, hose still aimed at a burning car frame. Even the radio seemed to still for a moment, static flaring in the silence.

Officer Nam glanced around, his face pale. “Your career is at stake here.”

Just then, her comm crackled. “Unit Four, Officer Woo,” came a voice of someone from dispatch. “Command wants you on direct line. Stand by”

Seulgi reached up slowly, tapping her headset. Her heart pounded, hands clenching into a fist.

A new voice came through the line. Cold and authoritative. “Officer Woo, this is Deputy Commissioner Hwang.”

Her breath hitched but she said nothing.

“I’ve been informed you're refusing to prioritize the Councilman’s extraction. Confirm.”

Seulgi’s jaw flexed. “Confirmed.”

A pause. Then, colder: “This is not a suggestion. We are already receiving media interest. We need him on a stretcher and out of that scene now.”

“There’s a teenage boy and a woman that needs to be prioritize than him.” she replied, voice tight with restrained fury. “If I move Councilman Kim ahead of them, I am condemning those victims to die.”

“This is not your call to make.”

“With all due respect, sir, that is not the oath I signed for,” Seulgi said, her voice calm but firm as she met Officer Nam’s gaze.

“I didn’t become a police officer to prioritize politics over saving lives. I’m not going to sacrifice others just to prioritize someone with political weight.”

Officer Nam’s jaw clenched. He glanced toward the Councilman’s ambulance, visibly torn.

“You realize the consequences of disobeying a direct order?” Hwang said

“I do,” Seulgi said. Her voice wasn’t sharp anymore, but it was quiet and steady.

“I’ll face them. But I’m not letting a kid die so someone up top can protect a headline.”

Then came another voice from behind.

“Move.”

Seulgi turned.

Jaeyi had arrived, stepping out of a responder van like a phantom through the rain. Her hospital coat clung to her frame, soaked and streaked with ash. Surgical gloves already on. She didn’t look at Seulgi. Didn’t need to. Her presence alone was enough to shift the air.

Seulgi’s heart skipped a beat, though she kept her composure.

Jaeyi dropped to one knee beside the wrecked luxury car, peering in at Councilman Kim. Her expression didn’t change.

“Pulse is weak,” she called out. “Signs of internal bleeding but responsive. He’ll be needing a surgery, but it can wait. I agree with Officer Woo.”

And then their eyes met and the weight of the moment lingering between them.

Seulgi’s comm crackled again, pulling her attention away.

“Doctor,” came Deputy Commissioner Hwang’s voice with sharper a sharper note. “You are on-scene in an advisory capacity. That triage order is not yours to override.”

Jaeyi didn’t look up. She adjusted the Councilman’s neck brace with practiced hands. She held her hands then, asking for the comm to be transferred to her. Byeongjin and Seulgi shared a confused look before Seulgi gave it. Fingers brushing for a moment.

“This is Dr. Yoo Jaeyi of J Medical Center. Board-certified trauma surgeon and emergency override consultant under Article 7 Emergency Medical Authority.” Her voice was clean and sharp, unshaken. “Based on immediate vitals, this patient is not in priority need. The adolescent male at Vehicle Two is in critical respiratory failure. He gets first evacuation”

The name Yoo Jaeyi still carried weight. A dangerous one. After all, she was the daughter of Yoo Taejoon, the surgeon whose hands had built J Medical Center into the country’s top trauma facility. A man whose reputation in operating rooms was unmatched, and whose presence in political circles made people think twice before crossing him.

Taejoon wasn’t known for kindness or humility. He was known for results. For cutting through flesh with insane precision. For saving the kinds of people whose survival shaped headlines while making sure everyone knew it.

And Jaeyi had inherited that legacy. Not just the skill, but the authority that came with it. She didn’t need to raise her voice. Her name did it for her.

“Dr. Yoo, you’re playing with jurisdiction.”

“No,” she replied calmly. “I’m practicing medicine. You want to talk jurisdiction? We can do it at the ethics board.”

A pause on the line.

Hwang said nothing.

Because anything he said next would be on record. And Yoo Taejoon’s daughter had just staked her name on the line.

The Councilman was then stabilized by another team of paramedics.  Seulgi turned, scanning the wreckage and the people scattered across the scene. The burned woman, now semi-conscious, was being tended to by another crew. The teenager, still strapped into the front seat of a crushed hatchback, was showing signs of severe respiratory distress. His chest barely rising and falling as he gasped for air.

Seulgi ran.

She pushed through a cluster of responders, their movements frantic but focused. Sirens wailed in the distance, harmonizing with the rising wind and the distant crackle of radios. Rain slicked the pavement, mixing with the blood and oil that streaked the road.

“Need a needle for the kid’s lungs! We’ve got fluid backup!” a medic shouted, his voice slicing through the chaos.

Seulgi dropped to her knees beside the boy. His lips tinged blue, each breath a shallow gasp. His eyes fluttered open, dazed, terrified. She reached for his hand without thinking, squeezing gently.

“You’re doing great,” she whispered, leaning close so he could hear her over the storm. “Just hang in there a little longer, okay? We’ve got you. Help’s coming.”

She kept her voice steady, warm, a tether to hold him in place while the world spun around them. Her other hand brushed rain from his forehead, careful not to disturb the oxygen mask secured over his face.

Behind her, Jaeyi was already moving. Surgical gloves soaked, hospital coat plastered to her frame, she cut through the noise and panic like a blade. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t even pause to process. She was in her element, her presence cool and controlled amid the rising urgency.

“Help on the burns!” another paramedic called out, crouched beside the woman with half her face scorched.

Jaeyi moved quickly, her steps sure and confident. She knelt beside the burned woman without hesitation, pulling a trauma kit from the nearby supply bag. Everything about her was calm and focused. She gave a short nod to the paramedic who had been tending to the woman, silently letting him know she had it from here.

Her voice, when she spoke, was clear and firm. Her hands moved quickly, checking vitals, cutting away burned fabric, preparing to cool and dress the wounds. There was no panic in her movements. Just calm, steady work. The kind that made people around her breathe a little easier.

Seulgi had expected nothing less. She had seen Jaeyi like this when they were in high school. Back then, it felt natural to see her take charge. Sharp, composed, and utterly capable miss student council president. A smile almost crossed to Seulgi’s face. Because God, she was so proud of her.

When the boy clung to her tighter, Seulgi then shifted her full focus on the boy. “You’re okay. Just a little more. I’m right here.”

The paramedics rushed over, one of them clutching a decompression needle and chest seal with trembling hands. His face was pale, eyes wide. “Ready,” he said, but it came out more like a question than a statement.

The fear in his voice rippled through the others.

The boy’s chest was barely rising now.

Seulgi exhaled, steadying the boy’s shoulder. “You’re going to feel some pressure, okay? Just squeeze my hand.”

She then turned to the anxious medic, her voice in between of a command and encouragement “Do it right.”

“I’ll do it”

Jaeyi was suddenly there. She dropped to her knees across from Seulgi, her soaked gloves already in place, eyes scanning the boy with ruthless speed. One hand found the barely rising chest. Her palm rested there. Light, but with purpose. Her other hand reached for the needle, already sterilizing the spot.

Seulgi didn’t speak. Just watched her work. The paramedic stepped back in silence, relieved and rattled.

With one puncture and a hiss of air. The boy’s chest rose more freely, and his breathing eased almost instantly. Jaeyi was quick to do what else must be done.

Just then, a sudden screech of metal broke through the noise.

A piece of jagged debris. Maybe a car door or a sheared panel, it doesn’t matter. It had come loose from the wreckage as responders shifted a vehicle frame. It caught the wind and whipped through the air like a blade, spinning toward them.

Seulgi didn’t think. She moved.

In one breathless second, she twisted, throwing her arm out to shield Jaeyi, who was still focused on the boy’s chest tube. Her palm caught the metal mid-air, redirecting its arc just enough to keep it from hitting Jaeyi.

But Seulgi didn’t dodge fast enough.

The lower edge of the panel raked across her thigh as it fell, sharp and unforgiving. The impact knocked her sideways with a guttural sound of tearing fabric and flesh.

The metal clattered to the ground with a clang, scraping the asphalt.

Jaeyi flinched, her head snapping toward the noise. She froze at the sight of Seulgi, stumbling one step before steadying herself. Blood already bloomed across the side of her pants, dark and fast.

“Seulgi,” Jaeyi breathed, voice uncharacteristically sharp with alarm.

Seulgi didn’t answer right away. Her breath caught, more from shock than pain. She glanced down at the jagged tear in her pants, then up at Jaeyi, still kneeling over the boy. Her hand trembled slightly as she waved the others off.

“Continue,” she said, voice tight but controlled. Her jaw clenched against the pain, but her stance didn’t waver. “He needs you more than I do.”

Jaeyi’s gaze lingered, disbelief and something else flashing in her eyes. Something that cracked through her clinical shell. “You’re bleeding,” she said, almost accusing, as if Seulgi had somehow made a tactical error.

“I’m aware,” Seulgi muttered.

Then came the responder, the one who’d shifted the frame, face pale beneath his helmet. He bent to grab the metal. “I—I’m so sorry, I didn’t see—”

“What the hell were you doing?” Seulgi snapped, voice suddenly sharp, the control in her tone cracking under the pain and fury. The same voice she use to discipline her team “You don’t move debris like that without flagging it!”

Jaeyi winced a little. She never heard Seulgi like this before. Saying she’s caught off guard would be an understatement. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Seulgi was capable. Of course she was. But hearing her it firsthand, it felt something else entirely.

The responder backed up, murmuring more apologies with shaking hands, but Seulgi had already looked away, regret taking over for raising her voice.

Seulgi’s jaw was now clenched. Knuckles white against the pressure she applied to her own thigh. She was still upright, refusing to sit. Gritting her teeth against the pain. Stubborn as hell, and just as proud. There was no mistaking the slight tremble in her arms, the forced calm in her breath.

Jaeyi felt something tighten in her chest. Not quite guilt. Not quite anger. A tangle of things she hadn’t had time nor courage to name.

Jaeyi watched her closely.

“Seulgi, sit down,” She said, now standing, blood on her gloves and urgency in her voice.

But Seulgi shook her head. “Kid first.”

The boy let out a weak cough on the stretcher as the paramedics moved to wheel him away, stabilizing him with oxygen and new vitals. Only then did Seulgi let out a breath. Adrenaline began to wear off.

Jaeyi was beside her before she could stumble. One arm around her back, the other guiding her to sit on the edge of a roadside curb. Their faces were inches apart now, too close for comfort, too close to ignore.

“You’re reckless,” Jaeyi muttered, already tearing open a sterile pack to check the wound.

“I kept you from getting skewered,” Seulgi shot back, breathing hard.

Jaeyi looked up. Her expression was unreadable caught somewhere between exasperation and something else. One thing for sure, it was something softer.

“You didn’t have to catch it. It could’ve hit you elsewhere” she said.

“I wasn’t going to” Seulgi replied, eyes locked with hers. “But I did. And maybe I would again.”

For a long second, neither of them moved. The sirens continued in the distance. Rain pattered around them. Somewhere nearby, the Councilman’s stretcher was being loaded into an ambulance.

Jaeyi blinked first. She looked down, pressing gauze firmly against Seulgi’s thigh. “You’re lucky. Clean pass-through. Deep, but no artery.”

“Good. Still mobile.”

“You’re not mobile. You’re bleeding through your pants.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t walk.”

Jaeyi exhaled. Sharp, irritated, familiar. She pressed the gauze harder against Seulgi’s leg, earning a guttural wince from Seulgi.

A cruiser then parks near them. Officer Nam jogged over, eyes scanning the blood soaking through Seulgi’s uniform before landing on the wreck behind them.

“Shit,” he muttered, crouching down. “Are you—?”

“I’m fine,” Seulgi cut in, waving him off.

Byeongjin hesitated, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Listen. They’re pressing. Deputy Hwangshit wants the ambulance convoyed all the way to J Medical Center. Says if we don’t escort the Councilman now, they’ll come down on me next.”

Seulgi’s jaw clenched. “That’s low. Even for them.”

Byeongjin gave him a look, almost pleading “I know.”

Seulgi cursed under her breath, eyes flicking to the ambulance where the Councilman lay sedated and oxygen, his vitals now stable. “Fine,” she snapped. “We’ll take the damn convoy.”

As if on cue, Jaeyi’s phone throw a buzzing fit. She took off one of her gloves and answered.

A beat passed. Then another.

When she lowered it, something in her expression had shifted.

“They’ve assigned me to operate on the Councilman,” she said, voice flat. “Trauma OR’s being cleared now”

“Perfect,” Seulgi muttered. “Just what today needed.”

Byeongjin looked between them, unsure whether he was supposed to comment on the strange gravity that passed between the two women. He didn’t. Instead, he stood up and opened the door of the cruiser.

“I’ll drive,” he said. “You both ride with me. We’ll follow the ambulance in.”

Seulgi pushed herself upright, biting back a grimace as her thigh protested. Jaeyi moved to support her, but Seulgi waved her off.

“I’ve got it.”

“Of course you do” Jaeyi muttered.

Seulgi didn’t answer, just limped toward the cruiser, pride intact and pain ignored.

Jaeyi followed a step behind, her eyes rolling. Something she regret showing right away.

In the front seat, Byeongjin started the engine. The ambulance ahead pulled onto the rain-slicked road, lights strobing red and blue across the cracked pavement.

Seulgi slid into the back seat with a hiss through her teeth, resting her head against the window. Jaeyi sat beside her, silent and a little furious.

For a few seconds, no one spoke.

Then the cruiser rolled forward, tires hissing over the wet road.

Chapter Text

They arrived at the hospital with barely a jolt. The ambulance ahead was already unloading. As the cruiser slowed, Jaeyi opened her door and stepped out fast. Too fast. She didn’t look back, didn’t say a word, just broke into a run toward the emergency bay, her coat flaring behind her.

Seulgi caught the motion in her peripheral vision, watching her disappear into the flood of staff and stretchers.

Byeongjin exhaled beside her. “You gonna sit there bleeding through the car’s seat?”

“I already got first aid,” Seulgi said, trying to wave him off. “She said no damaged artery”

Byeongjin turned toward her, eyes shifting on her wound “I didn’t asked”

Before Seulgi could argue again, a nurse sprinted up to their vehicle, nearly colliding with the cruiser’s door. He was panting, clearly sent with purpose.

“Are you Officer Woo Seulgi?” he asked through Byeongjin’s opened window

“No. The patient at the back, yes.” Byeongjin answered mischievously.

“Right. There’s a priority note on her file. She’s flagged for immediate care. I’ve been instructed to bring her in. Says non-negotiable”

Seulgi raised an eyebrow, caught off guard. “What? Me?”

The nurse didn’t answer, only motioned urgently. Byeongjin gave her a look, half-smirking now, half-relieved. “What’s your score with Dr. Yoo Jaeyi?”

Seulgi scoffed.

“I’m just saying,” he said, holding up both hands like he was innocent, though the smirk on his face said otherwise. “VIP-level escort straight into emergency care? That’s not standard. You definitely got pull.”

Before Seulgi could respond, the side of her door opened, and the nurse motioned again. “We have a bay cleared. Let’s go.”

Byeongjin then stepped out to assist, grabbing her other arm without asking. Between him and the nurse, they got her onto the waiting wheelchair.

“I’ll park inside and call me when you’re done. I don’t want to report to Hwangshit by myself” Byeongjin said as she was wheeled toward the ER doors.

The air in the ER was razor-sharp with tension. Screams echoed down the corridor, nurses and patients ducking for cover as the man with sweat-slicked and wild-eyed waves a gun, dragging a trembling nurse with him like a shield.

“Back off!” he barked, voice fraying at the edges. “I swear to God, I’ll do it!”

No one moved.

“You said he was coming!” he shouted, voice cracking. “You said you’d bring him after me! Where is my son?!”

A few paces down the corridor, just beyond the perimeter of frozen staff, Seulgi heard the commotion. Already alert, already halfway standing from the wheelchair. 

“Don’t come in—there’s a hostage taking!” a nurse barked, stepping into their path, both hands out. Her voice was tight with fear, the words tripping over themselves. “There’s a man with a gun, it’s not safe.”

“What happened?” the nurse pushing Seulgi’s wheelchair asked, already paling.

“I’m not really sure,” the first nurse replied, glancing anxiously down the hall. “Something about the accident earlier. He’s screaming about his son. He’s completely unhinged.”

Seulgi was already pushing herself up the rest of the way.

The second nurse moved quickly to block her. “Wait, Officer! You’re hurt. You don’t have to—”

“It’s okay,” Seulgi said, voice quiet but firm, already limping forward. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, please Officer, you’re bleeding. You shouldn’t even be standing!”

Seulgi didn’t stop. The gauze under her pants was already soaked through, her thigh protesting every step but her focus didn’t waver.

The nurses moved with her, still trying to block her path. “You’re in no condition to handle this! Let the security deal with it—”

“I am security,” Seulgi said flatly, her tone like a door slamming shut.

That stopped them.

She brushed past, not rudely, but decisively. The way someone walks when fear has no place. Her uniform was rain-drenched, smudged with ash and dried blood, her badge clipped high and clear on her chest.

The man’s grip tightened on the nurse, the barrel pressed flush against her temple. She whimpered, barely audible, but it echoed in the tense corridor.

“Back off!” he roared, sweat dripping from his brow. “I swear to God, I’ll do it!”

No one moved.

Until Seulgi stepped into the open.

Each step was deliberate, slow. Her limp still obvious from her wounded thigh, but her presence is unshakable. She didn’t raise her hands high, just enough to show she wasn’t a threat. No gun. No sudden movements. Just her badge and her eyes locked on his.

“Where is my son?!” he cried again. “You said he’d be here!”

“What’s his name?” Seulgi asked calmly, voice low but clear. “Talk to me.”

He blinked, frantic, as if the question itself hurt. “Lee Jihoon. He was in the crash. They said he was in on his way.” his voice cracked. “They promised.”

“I know,” Seulgi said gently, taking a cautious step forward. “I’m sorry. You’re scared. But this isn’t the way.”

The man was trembling. Seulgi could see it now, the tears, the frayed edges of his desperation.

“You want to see your son?” she said. “Then let her go. You don’t want him waking up and hearing his father did this, do you?”

The man blinked. His hand faltered.

It could’ve ended there.

But then, through the corridor, someone stepped in.

It was a doctor in scrubs, breathless, eyes wide with worry. The nurse’s boyfriend. The one who’d been held hostage.

He jumped in right away. Too fast. Too suddenly.

It made the man flinched violently, startled.

Bang.

The shot exploded into the ceiling.

Screams tore through the air as debris rained down.

The nurse shrieked and ducked, but just before the man could tighten his grip again, Seulgi lunged.

The impact knocked them both to the ground, hard. The gun skidded across the floor, out of reach. Seulgi scrambled, one arm pinning the man’s shoulder, the other wrestling for control as he thrashed beneath her.

He was stronger than she expected. Rage and panic giving him erratic strength.

Down the hall, Jaeyi heard the shot.

She froze.

The echo of it bounced down the corridor like a scream. Her breath caught. Short and sharp. Her ears rang. Her brain refused to make sense of it.

She went closer to the scene. Her whole-body trembling. Just when she was about to walk away, she saw the nurse she’d sent for Seulgi. Stood rooted behind an empty wheelchair, helpless. Jaeyi’s heart dropped into her stomach.

She ran. Didn’t stop to ask. Didn’t think. Her eyes found Seulgi. On the floor, fighting off a frenzied man twice her size, injured and still somehow in control.

Shock laced with disbelief struck her chest. Seulgi was injured. She shouldn’t be fighting.

Seulgi grunted as the man’s elbow slammed into her shoulder. She barely flinched. Then another blow cracked up into her jaw. Her head jerked back, blood flecking from her lip, but her grip didn’t loosen. She clung to him like a force of nature, refusing to give an inch.

Jaeyi’s stomach turned.

She twisted her body, tried to shift her weight, using her good leg to pin his arm. But he bucked beneath her, manic and unpredictable, nearly throwing her off.

“Get off me!” the man shrieked, throat raw, eyes bloodshot.

Jaeyi snapped.

“Where the hell are the guards?!” Jaeyi shouted, her voice slicing through the chaos like a blade. “Someone help her!”

There was a beat then a voice responded shakily from behind the nurses' station.

“They're with the VIP that just arrived! Security’s been pulled to lock down that wing!”

Jaeyi’s head snapped toward the sound, disbelief painted across her face.

“What?!”

“Let me go!” the man screamed again, but Seulgi stayed on him. Her teeth clenched, blood streaking down her chin. She adjusted her stance, breath heaving, and then the man saw it.

The jagged tear in her pants. The blood-soaked gauze. The wound.

His eyes darkened and Seulgi saw it a second too late. “Don’t!”

He slammed his hand into her thigh, right into the injury, putting his full weight behind it.

Jaeyi saw it at the same time.

“No!”

Seulgi’s scream tore from her throat. It was sharp, full of pain, and it echoed off the walls. Her head snapped back, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched so hard it could’ve cracked. For a second, she looked like she might fall.

Jaeyi staggered a step forward, her heart splitting in two. She couldn't breathe. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t move but she nearly ran in.

Seulgi didn’t stop. The pain sharpened her senses. Her instincts took over. She used his momentum against him, twisting her hips and driving other knee hard into his ribs. He coughed violently, momentarily stunned.

Then she grabbed him by the collar and drove her forearm into his throat, pinning him back with a chokehold angle. He flailed, gasping, fingernails raking down her arms, but she didn’t let go.

He tried to wrench her off, tugged at her, fists pounding against her ribs and with one desperate shove, they rolled again. Their combined weight smashed into the glass partition.

It shattered with a loud crack. The two of them tumbled through it, taking down part of the wall and a tray of equipment. Shards and metal rained down over them.

Jaeyi’s feet moved before she could think.

“Seulgi!” she shouted, voice cracking. She ran forward. 

The two didn’t move. Dust hung in the air. For a horrible second, she couldn’t see if Seulgi was moving. She stopped. Staring, heart pounding in her ears. Then, from under the debris a sob echoed.

The man.

He curled up slightly, gasping for breath. “I just, I just wanted to see my son” he mumbled. His voice breaking. He was crying now. But Jaeyi didn’t buy it.

Her eyes scanned the floor. Looking for the gun. Under a gurney, she ran for it. Dropped to one knee. Grabbed it fast. Stood up. Two hands on the grip. Finger ready.

“Someone secure him!” she snapped, eyes never leaving the man.

Two big built nurses rushed past her to grab him. He didn’t fight anymore. Just lay there, crying.

But Jaeyi didn’t look away. Not until she saw Seulgi stir.

She was slow to rise, shaky, one hand pressed to her bleeding thigh, the other pushing glass shards away as she braced herself against the cracked floor. Red streaked down her leg, soaking her pants. But she stood. Because of course she did.

Their eyes met.

Jaeyi exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, her grip on the gun tightened. Her hands began to shake. Her knuckles went white against the dark polymer of the pistol.

And then it hit her.

Too fast.

Too hard.

The weight of the cold metal in her hands. The memories behind it.

A silent gunshot, too close, and somehow too loud. Blood on hands she couldn't wash clean. Screaming, sharp, terrified. Her father’s voice. The hallway back home.

Her breath caught. She was back there. Almost instantly, she went pale. The pistol clattered to the floor. A hollow, echoing sound. Like something inside her had broken loose. She staggered back a step, as if struck, chest heaving. Her throat tightened. Her vision tunneled. She couldn’t breathe.

She was drowning.

Seulgi noticed. She’d seen it before. Too many times in the field. The thousand-yard stare. The locked-up breath. The way the body tried to disappear while the mind spiraled inward.

Panic attack.

With a new sense of urgency, she limped toward Jaeyi, blood leaving a trail behind her.

“Jaeyi,” Seulgi called, breathless.

Jaeyi’s eyes were wide but unfocused. Her hand had clenched into a fist without her noticing. She was retreating somewhere far away, sinking into a place where voices couldn't reach. Her breaths came in short, ragged bursts like she was trying to breathe through water.

“Jaeyi,” Seulgi tried again, firmer this time. Still nothing.

Seulgi closed the distance, nearly stumbling the last step. She reached out, then hesitated. She wasn’t sure where to touch her, what wouldn’t make it worse. But then she went for Jaeyi’s forearm, grounding her with both hands, gentle.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Still no focus in Jaeyi’s eyes, Seulgi cupped her face gently, firm but not forceful, pulling her out of the spiral “Jaeyi. You’re here. You’re not there. You’re with me.”

Jaeyi blinked, finally meeting her gaze, barely. Her pupils were huge, her breathing still ragged.

“Good,” Seulgi said softly, squeezing her other arm. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here”

Not breaking their eye contact and while biting back a groan, Seulgi nodded as if to encourage her

“I need you to breathe with me, okay? Copy me.” Seulgi inhaled slowly, audibly. “In,”

Jaeyi’s breath hitched, like her body forgot how. But she tried.

“and out.”

She didn’t get it quite right, but it was something.

“That’s good. One more.” Seulgi’s voice softened, like a quiet tether through the noise. “Come on, Dr. Yoo. Back to me.”

The use of her title broke something loose.

Jaeyi exhaled sharply. Half sob, half gasp as her knees gave way beneath her.

Seulgi caught her, arms wrapping around her instinctively, though her own wounded leg buckled under the strain.

Jaeyi’s hands clung to Seulgi’s uniform, fists tight in the fabric like it was the only thing keeping her from slipping under.

“I’ve got you,” Seulgi murmured, her voice hoarse, pain laced into every word “You’re safe. You’re here. I’m here”

Her voice thinned to a whisper, barely audible over the hum of the chaos still settling around them.

Jaeyi didn’t speak. Her lips parted, trembling, like she was trying to form a word, but nothing came. Her chest still rose and fell too fast, too shallow, but the edges of the panic were softening. The world was creeping back in. Sound. Light. The weight of Seulgi’s arms around her.

Her eyes fluttered, struggling to stay focused. Everything felt distant, like she was still underwater. But then something else caught her attention. The blood. Pooling beneath Seulgi’s leg. Thick. Dark. Spreading fast. A long smear trailing from where she’d dragged herself through the broken partition.

The panic didn’t leave her. It twisted into something sharper.

Seulgi was shaking from sheer pain. She was trying to stay upright, trying to hold Jaeyi, even as her body started to give out beneath her.

Jaeyi’s breath caught in her throat for an entirely different reason now.

Her heart lurched. Her hands shook. But she forced herself to breathe. One beat at a time. In. Out. Hold it together. Hold it together.

She moved. Not with the clean precision she was known for but with urgency, raw and stripped down.

Dropping to her knees beside Seulgi, Jaeyi’s hands went to the torn fabric at her thigh. Her movements were practiced but there was tension in every line of her body, in the way her jaw clenched, and her breath caught every few seconds.

Blood soaked her gloves instantly. Warm. Too much.

“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, pressing down hard.

Seulgi flinched with a sharp hiss. “Shit—”

“Don’t move,” Jaeyi snapped, her voice low and tight, barely holding steady.

She didn’t look up. Couldn’t.

Because if she did, if she saw how pale Seulgi was, she might lose it all over again.

But something else had already broken.

Fury bloomed in her chest, white-hot and consuming.

She was mad. At the blood soaking the floor, the way it pulsed out of Seulgi. Mad at this disaster that should never happened. Mad at the security team for not even showing up. Mad at the ceiling that collapsed like an afterthought. And most of all, mad at herself. For coming apart right in front of her.

Her fingers trembled, still echoing the aftershocks of the panic. But the motions were automatic now, clinical, almost violent in their efficiency as she worked to assess Seulgi’s wound.

It was bad. Worse than she wanted to admit. Seulgi needed full care.

And then, like the world was mocking her, Officer Nam Byeongjin stepped into the corridor, eyes wide, voice sharp. “What the hell happened here?”

Jaeyi’s head snapped up.

The glare she leveled at him could’ve cut steel.

Byeongjin froze mid-step.

A nurse arrived at the same time. Jaeyi spoke to him instead. “Give me more gauze.”

Byeongjin stepped forward hesitantly “Why are you here? Who’s with the VIP?”

“Another top surgeon,” Jaeyi replied curtly. “The councilman is covered. Worry about something else.”

She didn’t look at Byeongjin again. The authority in her voice made it clear she was done speaking to him.

The nurse gave a brisk nod and signaled toward the incoming stretcher.

“On the count of three”

Jaeyi and the nurse worked in sync, lifting and transferring Seulgi from the floor to the stretcher with minimal movement, though every bump drew a sharp breath from Seulgi’s clenched teeth.

Jaeyi’s hand never left her, not even during the short push down the hall. The corridor lights passed in fast, stuttering blurs overhead. A sharp contrast to the quiet focus etched into Jaeyi’s face. Seulgi caught glimpses of her jaw tight. Eyes forward. Not saying anything, not explaining anything.

Just moving.

The gurney rolled through into one of the side emergency rooms now reconfigured for trauma care. Medical lights flicked on, harsh and bright. The air felt colder here, tighter.

The nurse peeled back the curtain and cleared the space. Jaeyi stepped up immediately, snapping on fresh gloves as the gurney locked into place.

Jaeyi stayed crouched at Seulgi’s side, gloved hands already pressing down again, bracing the leg to stop what bleeding she could. She muttered something low, a medical note maybe, but her voice was tight. Controlled. Too controlled.

Seulgi didn’t miss it.

She let her head sink back against the gurney. Her breathing came in steady, shallow pulls. The pain wasn’t sharp anymore, it was dull, mean, and constant. But it wasn’t what held her attention.

It was Jaeyi.

There was something brittle under that calm now. Though Seulgi didn’t speak. Didn’t press. But her silence wasn’t passive. She watched Jaeyi’s hands as they moved. The subtle tremble she was trying too hard to hide. The sharp exhale that didn’t match the rhythm of her work.

Blood seeped into the padding again, warm and unwelcome. Jaeyi swore under her breath again. Soft but furious and reached for more gauze. The tension between them was thick. Tense, charged.

“Jaeyi.”

With so many things she wanted to say, questions about what just happened back there, Seulgi came up with just her name. It wasn’t the right moment anyway.

Jaeyi didn’t look up. She tucked the soaked gauze away, replaced it with fresh layers, and reached for the syringe on the tray beside her.

“I’ll inject anesthesia now,” she said, her voice neutral.

Seulgi exhaled softly. She didn’t flinch as the needle entered her skin. But her eyes never left Jaeyi’s face.

"You should sit," she said quietly, as Jaeyi pressed down on the syringe. "You’re shaking."

The words hung in the air. Not accusing. Not prying. Just true.

Jaeyi paused, the plunger halfway depressed. Her eyes flicked to Seulgi for the briefest second and then dropped again to the task. She finished the injection and withdrew the needle with precise control.

“I’m fine,” she said, almost too quickly.

“You’re not.”

That was all Seulgi said. Her head lolled slightly to one side, eyelids fluttering as the drug began to seep into her system. She blinked hard, trying to stay present, trying not to sink too fast into the weight pulling at her limbs.

Jaeyi didn’t answer. She turned away instead, disposing of the used gauze and beginning to stitch. Her hands moved with sharp precision, but Seulgi could see the tension in them, too rigid.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Seulgi murmured. Her voice was softer now, slurred slightly around the edges. “Just, you need to rest too.”

That time, Jaeyi did stop.

Just for a second.

Her gloved hands froze over the stitch. Her shoulders lifted with a breath she didn’t quite release.

Then, quietly, Jaeyi said, “Later”

Seulgi didn’t respond. She just reached, slowly, carefully, and laid a hand over Jaeyi’s wrist.

Not to stop her.

Just to feel her.

For once, Jaeyi didn’t pull away.

The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was dense. Weighted with everything they weren’t saying yet.

Seulgi’s fingers stayed on her wrist, light but grounding, until Jaeyi finally exhaled. Not a sigh. Not relief. Just the kind of breath you let go of when you've been holding it in too long.

Seulgi’s eyes fluttered once. Twice. And then they closed.

Her fingers remained where they were, soft against Jaeyi’s skin, even as her body gave in to sleep.

Jaeyi didn’t move it out yet.

She let it stay there. Hands still as the weight of the silence deepened. And then, barely above a whisper, she breathed out the one word she’d been holding back since she saw Seulgi bleed out way back the accident area.

“Idiot”

Chapter Text

The room quieted around them, filled only with muted clatter of instruments being cleared away. The sounds of the ward were muffled beyond the curtain: rolling carts, soft voices, the occasional beeping of a monitor from another room.  Jaeyi remained at Seulgi’s side long after the last stitch was in place. She should’ve handed off care to a nurse by now. Should’ve cleaned up. Should’ve walked out.

But she didn’t.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the wound, even though it was no longer bleeding. Even though there was nothing more to be done. Her fingers hovered like they were waiting for another excuse to touch, to stay, to do something. She pulled back finally. Slowly. Not with relief, but with reluctance. She stood, peeled off her gloves with practiced precision, and dropped them into the biohazard bin. The sound was soft, insignificant. But it echoed in her ears louder than it should have.

Seulgi’s fingers still rested where they had fallen, barely brushing the edge of the bed now that Jaeyi had stepped away. Jaeyi didn’t look at her face. She didn’t dare. She turned instead to the makeshift sink, washed her hands with too much force, like she could scrub off more than just blood. Like she could erase the memory of shaking in Seulgi’s arms. She stared down at the water swirling pink into the drain. Then, after a pause, she reached for a clean towel, dried her hands in silence, and finally glanced back.

Seulgi hadn’t stirred. But her brow was furrowed slightly, even in sleep. As if her body still hadn’t fully let go. Jaeyi approached again, her steps quiet. She stood at the edge of the bed, arms crossed, eyes scanning Seulgi’s exposed bandaged thigh to her sleeping face. Then, her voice, softer this time, barely audible, broke the stillness.

“You scared the hell out of me.”

No one was awake to hear it. Maybe that’s why she allowed herself to say it.

Jaeyi stayed a moment longer. Then reached out, almost without thinking, and adjusted the blanket draped over Seulgi’s chest. Her fingers brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. A feather-light touch. Too soft. Too careful. She caught herself and pulled her hand back quickly.

Something flashed before her. Memories and walls she had built. She took a breath and stepped away again, walking to the door. But just before she left, she paused at the threshold, her silhouette caught in the frame of the light.

A beat passed. Then two. She turned around to leave something before leaving.

Seulgi woke to the soft hum of a air-condition and the sterile chill of medical lighting dimmed low. Her body felt heavier now, but the sharpness of the pain had dulled into something manageable. She blinked slowly, gaze adjusting to the room.

Empty. Almost.

Her eyes landed on something draped across her waist. Not a blanket. Thicker. White. Structured.

A coat.

Jaeyi’s.

She knew it immediately. The crisp material, the faint scent of antiseptic and something cleaner underneath. Unmistakably hers. Expensive, too. Tailored. The kind of coat Jaeyi never lent to anyone. Seulgi blinked again, groggy but aware. Her hand moved to touch the fabric. It was still warm. Her eyes flicked toward the small tray nearby, where medical supplies had been cleared away with precise order. All except for one item: a folded surgical glove wrapper, weighted down by a pen. Underneath, a note.

"No infection risk. If you felt like burning up, call for a nurse immediately. Don’t be stubborn." —U.J.

No warm words. No gentle scrawl. Just instructions, clinical and crisp. But Seulgi stared at it a long time anyway.

Don’t be stubborn.

Coming from anyone else, it would’ve sounded bossy. From Jaeyi, it was practically an admission of concern. An entire conversation packed into four words.

But her hand didn’t leave the coat. Not because she was cold.But because the weight of it reminded her of something heavier. Something that hadn’t left her mind even in sleep. Jaeyi, back in the hallway. The panic. The way her hands had shaken. The way she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Jaeyi, who's always composed, had cracked right there in front of her. And then forced herself back together just to stop her bleeding. Seulgi frowned faintly. That image was harder to let go of than the pain in her leg. Her hand drifted over the coat again, slower this time. Her fingers curled at the seam. She couldn’t stop thinking about how tightly Jaeyi had gripped the gauze. How she couldn’t look Seulgi in the eye. How her voice had almost broken before she said, "Later." Seulgi didn’t know what she would’ve said if Jaeyi had looked at her then. Or now.

What really happened, Jaeyi?

There was a soft voice before the curtain pulled back slightly. A nurse stepped in, tablet in hand. She glanced over Seulgi’s and then smiled faintly when she saw her awake.

“Good. You’re up.” She tapped a few things into her chart. “How’s the pain?”

“Manageable,” Seulgi murmured, voice rough from sleep.

The nurse nodded approvingly. Her gaze drifted briefly to the coat still draped over Seulgi’s shoulders.

“She told me not to take that off you,” the nurse said casually, like it was just another instruction in a long list. “Said you’d complain about the cold when you woke up, even if you pretended you wouldn’t.”

Seulgi looked down at the coat again. Smoothed her hand over the lapel. The weight of it wasn’t much, but somehow, it made her feel like she wasn’t alone in the room. She let her fingers trail along the inside hem, tracing the careful stitching there. Neat, even, just like everything else Jaeyi did. There was a comfort in that. In the order of it. Like if she held onto it long enough, she might be able to hold onto something else, too.

Time passed slowly. The coat was warm. Her leg throbbed dully. But more than anything, she just felt aware of her surroundings.

The curtain shifted with a soft pull, again. Seulgi didn’t open her eyes right away. She didn’t need to. She knew that sound, the unhurried, measured shuffle of someone too tired to pretend they weren’t. The hush of the world adjusting around someone like Jaeyi. No announcement. No voice calling her name. Just the soft scuff of shoes, the snap of gloves being pulled on.

“You’re awake.” Jaeyi said. It sounded quite and tired.

Seulgi blinked her eyes open.

Jaeyi was standing at the side of the bed, dark hair pulled back again, sleeves of her scrubs rolled to her elbows, no longer in her bloodstained doctor coat. She looked a little better. Still pale, still sharp-edged, but steadier now. 

“Hi, the nurse said you were sleeping too. I hope I didn’t wake you up,” Seulgi said, her voice dry, cracked around the edges.

“You didn’t.” Jaeyi didn’t look at her. She was already at the IV stand, fingers adjusting the line like she hadn’t sat half-asleep in a chair for the past hour, thinking of exactly this moment.
“The nurse said you were stable. But I had to see for myself.”

She didn’t say because I couldn’t sleep much otherwise.

Seulgi watched her, eyes tracing every small, careful movement. The crease between Jaeyi’s brows hadn’t faded. The shadows under her eyes weren’t from fatigue alone. But she looked like she had rested.

“You look better,” Seulgi murmured, voice rough but steady. “I mean you always do.”

There was the tiniest pause.

Jaeyi didn’t rise to it. She only said, deadpan, “And you look worse.”

It was unfair, maybe. But it was also true. And it made Seulgi laugh. just a little. A tired, breathy sound that made Jaeyi’s chest tighten without warning. It was stupid, how hearing it calmed her down more than anything else had all day. Jaeyi finally glanced at her. Just once. A flicker of contact. Her expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes softened for a moment. Then vanished. Her gaze dropped to the coat folded across Seulgi’s lap.

“I left it just in case.”

Just in case she got cold when she wakes up and needed something familiar. As if to say that Jaeyi didn’t left.

“I know,” Seulgi said.

Their eyes met then.

Brief. But long enough that the air shifted. Slowed. Jaeyi looked away first. She always did. Distance was easier to control than closeness. She moved to the foot of the bed, fingers flipping through the chart with forced calm. “Sutures are clean. No signs of infection. Your vitals are holding steady, but you’ll be off your feet for a while.”

Seulgi winced slightly as she adjusted her leg. “Can’t wait.”

“You’re lucky,” Jaeyi said, quieter now. “It could’ve been worse.”

“Maybe it was,” Seulgi said. “But you fixed it.”

Jaeyi didn’t answer. She hated when Seulgi said things like that. Not because it wasn’t true but because it was. Because she had no defense against it. Her thumb tapped once on the clipboard. Then again.

“Did you really have to stop him by yourself?”

Seulgi blinked. “What?”

Jaeyi’s voice stayed even, but something in it frayed at the edges. “I know you’re brave. And reckless. And stubborn. But why would you go after a man with a gun? Alone?”

“It was my job.”

“That’s not a reason,” Jaeyi said, sharper now. “That’s a uniform.”

“It’s both.”

Jaeyi looked down again. It wasn’t just fear that lived in her. It was anger, too. The kind that came from seeing blood where it shouldn't be. From realizing just how close she came to losing something she wasn’t supposed to have.

“You could’ve been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.”

The words came easily, like muscle memory. But they didn’t land. Not the way Seulgi meant them to. Jaeyi didn’t answer. But her silence wasn’t indifferent. It was loud. It pressed against the walls of the room, thick and unmoving, like humidity before a storm. Seulgi shifted on the bed, the sheets under her rustling faintly. She studied Jaeyi’s face or what she could see of it. Just the angle of her jaw, the sharp line of focus fixed on the chart she wasn’t writing in anymore.

“Is that what triggered it?” Seulgi asked, voice low.

A beat.

“No.”

It came too fast. Too sharp. Too rehearsed. The kind of “no” that didn’t invite follow-up. But Jaeyi’s hands had frozen. Fingers suspended just above the page. Not moving. Not fidgeting. Just still.

Seulgi didn’t push. She waited. Let the moment sit. Let the truth seep in.

“It was,” she said finally. Not accusing. Just steady. A quiet offering of understanding.

Jaeyi didn’t move. Not a flinch. But she didn’t breathe either, at least not visibly. Her shoulders stayed perfectly still, her face unreadable, her hands anchored to the chart like she might float away otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” Seulgi said gently. “If I only—”

“I didn’t mean for you to see that.” The words didn’t slice so much as slip out. Low, restrained, but brittle at the edges like something that had been held in too long.

Seulgi blinked. But she didn’t pull back.

“Jaeyi,” she said, soft again, “you think I haven’t seen someone break?”

That got Jaeyi’s attention. Not visibly, she still didn’t look at her but her grip on the clipboard tightened, just enough that the paper creased under her fingers.

“I’ve seen people fall apart in worse ways,” Seulgi went on, “for less.”

Her voice was never pitying. Just honest. Warm. An offer of comfort.

Before Jaeyi could respond, the curtain swished open.

“Hi—oh.” Byeongjin froze halfway through the entry like he’d just walked into something sacred. Which, in a way, he had.

Jaeyi shifted.

Barely.

But it was the kind of subtle shift that made it obvious she’d been caught being concerned and falling all at once. That tiny, involuntary straighten of the spine, the quick but sharp narrowing of her eyes. Not flustered but something close to one. She glared at Byeongjin and he flinched instinctively.

“I—sorry. Am I interrupting something?” he said, already stepping back.

“Yes,” Jaeyi replied flatly, without missing a beat.

That earned a quiet snort from Seulgi.

Byeongjin held up both hands in surrender, then shuffled forward anyway, as if the threat of Jaeyi’s glare could be mitigated by good intentions and sheer stubbornness. He stopped at Seulgi’s bedside and did a quick once-over, his expression flickering somewhere between concern and mischief. His eyes lingered on the bandaged leg.

“That looks worse up close.” he muttered.

Seulgi raised an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

He grinned sheepishly, then glanced between the two. Jaeyi standing all controlled steel and icy tension, and Seulgi lying there with Jaeyi’s coat still clutched like it meant something. It did mean something. Byeongjin didn’t have to say it.

Which of course meant he would.

With a sparkle in his eye, he leaned in and stage-whispered to Seulgi, “So, what’d I miss? Some kind of bonding moment? Are you two—”

Jaeyi turned her head, slow and deliberate, and gave him a look.

Byeongjin immediately shrunk back like he’d just been swatted. “Kidding. Totally kidding.”

Seulgi smirked. “Are you? Because you look like you’re about to start gossiping with the entire precinct.”

“Would I do that?” he said, too innocently. Then he clapped his hands together like he remembered why he’d come. “Anyway, I dropped by to check on your healing majesty before our big day.”

Jaeyi’s ear twitched as she adjusted something in the IV line.

Byeongjin barely noticed. “The buy-bust’s next week, you know. You’re still lead on the op. You’ll be good by then, right?”

Jaeyi’s hand paused at the IV clamp. Her eyes didn’t lift, but something about her stillness was louder than a raised voice.

Seulgi let out a groan and dropped her head back against the pillow. “Byeongjin.”

“What?” he held up his hands. “I’m just saying. You’re already sitting up, fully aware, and snarky. That’s gotta be good news.”

“We also got an extra budget,” he added, grinning. “You know, for escorting that councilman.”

Jaeyi’s voice cut in, clinical and cold. “She’s not cleared to return to duty.”

The smile slid from Byeongjin’s face. “She will be. Right? I mean, she’s got a whole week—”

“As her attending physician,” Jaeyi said, finally looking up, “I have full authority to cite her as medically unfit for field work.”

Byeongjin blinked. “Until when?”

“Until I say otherwise,” she replied, voice smooth but lined with steel. She folded her arms. “And I don't recommend testing that boundary.”

Silence settled. Seulgi, trying very hard not to look smug, pressed her lips together to hide the growing grin.

“You love pulling ranks, don’t you?” Byeongjin smirked.

“I do,” Jaeyi said simply, deadpan. “And I will. Unless you want her leg to open back up mid-operation and add another scar to the collection you two might’ve competing over.”

“We’re not” Seulgi chipped in.

Jaeyi ignored it, brushing invisible dust off the edge of the chart like she was polishing her point. “So, in short, find someone else to lead your operation.”

Byeongjin made a tch noise and looked at Jaeyi with playful exaggeration. “You know, there must be a way we can work something out. Think you can look the other way, just this once?”

Jaeyi turned to him with the driest expression imaginable. “Sure. I can call security and have you escorted out.”

Byeongjin winced theatrically. “Yikes. That’s a no.”

“Glad you understand.”

He held up his hands again and backed toward the curtain. “Well, I tried. I’ll leave the healing and brooding to you both.”

As he slipped out, Seulgi called after him. “Tell dispatch I want hazard pay.”

“You’ll get a cookie!” he called back.

The curtain swished shut behind him. Silence returned.

Jaeyi didn’t move.

Seulgi looked over at her, a smile tugging faintly at the corner of her lips. “You scared him.”

Jaeyi lifted a brow without looking up from the chart. “Good.”

The next day, Seulgi was discharged.

Jaeyi went over the instructions like it was just another patient. Not like she’d spent the better part of the night pacing between the lounge and Seulgi’s room.

“Keep the wound clean, no lifting, no stress on the leg. Watch for signs of infection. Come back if you have even the slightest concern.”

Seulgi leaned against the doorway of the room with a smug expression and arms crossed, or as smug as someone on crutches could look. “You sound like a checklist.”

“Because I am.” Jaeyi closed the file, then looked up. “I mean it.”

“I know.” A pause, then “Can I get a cleaning schedule?”

She said it so casually, like it wasn’t anything. Like she hadn’t just asked for an excuse to keep seeing her.

Jaeyi should’ve looked away. If she had, she could’ve said no. But she didn’t.

So, she didn’t.

And just like that, Seulgi started coming in. Every day. Right on time. Always with Byeongjin in tow partly because she still couldn’t drive, mostly because he insisted on tagging along to be a nuisance.He used every visit as an opportunity to wedge himself between the two of them with jokes, fake groans, and exaggerated eye-rolls managing, somehow, to annoy both Seulgi and Jaeyi in equal measure.

He’d always walk her in with theatrical commentary “She’s limping less today! It’s either healing or sheer willpower,” and leave just as loudly, usually grinning after Jaeyi kicked him out of the hallway with a single look.

Three days post-discharge, Seulgi was back at work.

Jaeyi found out from Byeongjin, who, of course, appeared outside the staff hallway like he had something gossip-worthy to drop.

“She’s back,” he declared, voice too loud for a hospital.

Jaeyi didn’t look up from the chart she was reviewing. Her pen scratched calmly across the page, steady. Unbothered. On the surface.

“She’s what?” she asked flatly.

“Back at work,” Byeongjin repeated, as if it wasn’t self-explanatory. “Desk duty. Limping around like it’s a trend. Ordering people like she’s been through war. Honestly, she’s more annoying when she’s injured. You should see it yourself”

Still, Jaeyi didn’t look up. Just flipped the chart over and started writing something new. Her brows didn’t furrow. Her expression didn’t shift. But there was a stillness to her, sharp and heavy.

Byeongjin glanced at her. Then cleared his throat.

“I mean,” he said quickly, “technically, she’s stable. Healing fine. You did good work. So I don’t see the harm. She’s not chasing suspects or anything—yet.”

Jaeyi clicked her pen once. Slowly. Precisely. He took a half-step back.

“You didn’t clear her, right?” he asked, tone lighter now, like he was joking. “I mean, she didn’t lie on a form or something?”

“No,” Jaeyi replied coolly. “But she would.”

Finally, she looked at him. Just once. Eyes cold. Bored. A doctor who had a thousand better things to do and also, somehow, one second away from flipping a table.

Byeongjin blinked. “Right,” he muttered. “Well, I’ll go. Just felt like you have to know”

When Byeongjin finally left Jaeyi returned to her desk and resumed her notes with the same surgical calm that demeanor. Her pen moved in even lines. Her posture didn’t shift. But her focus had already moved. Within a few minutes, she logged into the internal system. Fingers steady. Motions practiced. She pulled up Seulgi’s medical chart. Flagged the file: unauthorized return to duty.

Then, without blinking, she scheduled a follow-up appointment for the end of the week.

Same day as the buy-bust operation. Same hour, too. That was no coincidence. The timestamp placement was subtle, nestled among other check-ups and routine cleanings, marked under clinical maintenance protocol. On paper, it looked practical. But it wasn’t. Not really. It was tethering. A quiet way to keep Seulgi still. Keep her from doing something reckless. A carefully worded boundary disguised as medical oversight. Because if Jaeyi said it was doctor’s orders, maybe Seulgi would listen.

Jaeyi didn’t let herself think too hard about what that meant.

The day of the appointment, Jaeyi’s shift technically ended an hour earlie and of course didn’t leave. Instead, she stayed in the hospital, settling herself in the corridor just outside the private lounge with a neatly stacked file folder in her lap. Pretending to review case notes that had been finalized days ago. Every few minutes, she checked the time without looking like she was checking the time.

A nurse passed by. Slowed when she saw her. “Pulling an extra shift?” 

“No.”

“Then, what are you still doing here?”

Jaeyi didn’t look up. She turned a page in her file one she’d already read, and offered a small, noncommittal smile.

The nurse squinted, playful now. “Is this about Officer Woo?”

Jaeyi’s face didn’t move. Not visibly. But her brow twitched, barely. The way it always did when she was two seconds from walking away from a conversation she didn’t want to have. She stood. Straightened her coat. Then turned wordlessly toward the private lounge and walked off, heels soft, coat fluttering faintly behind her like punctuation at the end of an unspoken sentence. Not a word said. But the quiet answer hung in the air anyway.

Seulgi was driving. Traffic wasn’t too bad for a weekday. Her leg still ached if she pressed the brakes too hard, but she managed, keeping her jaw tight and one hand braced near the gear just in case. At a red light, she reached for her phone. No reply from Jaeyi. Not that she expected one.

Jaeyi never texted back. Not once since Seulgi had asked for her number before getting discharged. But she read them. Seulgi knew. Because sometimes she’d type something dumb, half-flirty, half-serious and hours later, Jaeyi would bring it up in person with that barely-there look. Seulgi smiled despite herself and typed something quick.

“I’ll call once I parked”

No reply.

Figures.

Still, she smiled again, leaned her head back against the backrest, and waited for the light to change.

Across the intersection, a blur of movement caught her eye. A car speeding against the light, weaving past traffic and past her lane. Her eyes narrowed. A beat later, she heard the distant wail of sirens. Several cruisers. Far behind. Too far. Whoever was driving was losing them fast.

Her comms crackled to life with urgence. “Any unit near District 2 post? Suspect on the move. We’ve lost visual. Repeat, suspect is evading eastbound.”

Then her screen lit up with a message from Byeongjin.

“Things escalated. We have casualties.”

The air thinned. Instincts kicking in. Seulgi’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Her leg throbbed in protest, but she was already shifting gears before the pain even registered.

She made a sharp U-turn.

Chapter Text

Back at the hospital, Jaeyi still hadn’t left.

The files on her lap were a formality now. Neat, crisp, mostly useless. She’d reviewed them all twice. She knew that. But still, she flipped through them, page by page, just to keep her hands busy. Just to stay seated.

That didn’t last long.

She stood. Began pacing slowly up and down the short stretch of hallway outside the private lounge. Her steps were even. Controlled. On the surface, she looked calm. Underneath, her thoughts were gnawing at themselves.

Fifteen minutes late.

Twenty.

Thirty.

Jaeyi glanced at her phone. Checked for the seventh time.

Still Nothing.

No message. No call. No excuse.

She went back to lounge and sat again. Immediately stood. Her fingers twitched at her side like they needed something to hold. She told herself not to worry. That Seulgi was just being Seulgi. Buying unnecessary things for her and might’ve been held up by a line.

But the appointment time ticked further out of reach, and that quiet, gnawing feeling began to carve deeper. She pulled out her phone and hovered over Seulgi’s contact. Her thumb hesitated over the call icon. Just one call. Just to check.

She took a breath.

And just as her finger brushed the screen, the hospital line rang. The internal emergency line on her private lounge.

She exhaled and answered it automatically. “Dr. Yoo Jaeyi speaking.”

A voice came through, choked and shaking.

“Dr. Yoo, this is Dr. Kim, we’ve got a code red in transit. Urgent trauma case. Officer Woo Seulgi has been shot—”

The words splintered the air. Everything else dropped out. The hum of her room. The rustle of papers. Her own breath.

Gone.

All she could hear was Seulgi’s name and the word shot, echoing around her skull.

Her hand went slack. The phone nearly slipped from her grip. She caught it again without realizing, eyes locked blankly on a spot in the wall ahead of her, as if staring could freeze time and undo the call.

“W–what?” It didn’t even sound like her voice. It cracked in the middle, thin with disbelief. Instinct clawed its way through the numbness.

“Gunshot wound,” the voice continued, breathless and clipped. “Left chest side. Heavy bleeding. Suspected internal trauma. She’s critical. She's on route now, ETA four minutes. We need you in Trauma 2.”

There wasn’t time to respond. Jaeyi was already moving before she even know it. She didn’t hear the phone clatter onto the desk behind her as she sprinted down the corridor. Her ID badge flew from her pocket. She didn’t stop for it.

Every turn of the hall echoed with the slap of her shoes against tile. Her scrubs tugged against her legs as she ran, the edges of her white coat flaring out behind her. She could hear vitals being shouted in the distance, different patients, different emergencies, but they all blurred into static.

The only name in her mind was Seulgi.

Seulgi was supposed to be on her way in. Why was she out there?

Jaeyi’s heart hammered against her ribs like it was trying to break out.

She reached the trauma bay just as the double doors burst open with a crash.

“CPR in progress, no pulse!” a paramedic yelled, voice hoarse and urgent.

He was straddling the gurney, hands slamming down on a blood-soaked chest, Seulgi’s chest. Another medic was squeezing oxygen into her through a mask, pale lips peeking out beneath the plastic, eyes closed, unmoving.

Time warped. Jaeyi didn’t move. For a split second, she was frozen in the doorway, unable to cross the threshold. Her brain tried to register everything, vitals, stats, chest compressions, blood loss, probable entry wound. But her body, her heart, rebelled.

It was Seulgi on that gurney.

Seulgi.

Seulgi.

Jaeyi blinked. Once. Twice. Hard.

Her hands clenched at her sides. Then moved.

The paralysis shattered.

“Prepare for thoracotomy. Get me an ultrasound and a full trauma panel. Start blood. Page vascular. Now.” Her hands were steady. Her voice, clear. But inside, something was splintering, and she couldn’t afford to feel it. Not now.

The trauma team responded without hesitation. A nurse snapped gloves over her hands with the speed of muscle memory. The table clattered into motion. Monitors beeped their chaotic symphony.

But Jaeyi only saw the stillness on Seulgi’s face.

They cut the vest. Scissors sliced through her bloodied uniform, peeling it back to expose the injury, a single gunshot wound to the left side, just under the ribs. A blooming hematoma, deep and dark. Entry wounds only, no exit. The worst kind.

She didn’t remember when she prepared. Didn’t remeber picking up the scalpel. Didn’t remember asking for suction. Didn’t remember anything but the blood. So much blood.

Alarms exploded around them, merciless and constant. It felt like a nightmare that refused to end. A blur of motion, adrenaline, and terror that blurred the edges of reality. Jaeyi’s gaze locked on the monitor, watching helplessly as Seulgi’s heart line flatlined.

A long, unbroken tone. Code one.

“Charge to 200,” she snapped, already reaching for the paddles. “Clear!”

The team stepped back. Seulgi’s body convulsed beneath the jolt, limbs jerking upward in a violent spasm, then crashing back to the table.

Nothing.

“Charge to 300.” Jaeyi gulped “Again!”

“Clear!”

Another shock.

The monitor hesitated at first then a flicker. A weak, slow rhythm.

“Sinus rhythm, weak pulse!” a nurse called out, hopeful but cautious.

“Start transfusion, hang two more units!” Jaeyi barked, eyes not leaving Seulgi’s chest.

But it didn’t last.

Thirty seconds later, the heart rate crashed again. The line went still.

“Code two,” someone whispered, already reaching for the crash cart.

Another flatline. Another death.

Jaeyi swallowed hard, jaw clenched tight. Her heart pounded in her ears, but her hands didn’t stop moving. She clamped a spurting bleeder with shaking fingers, suctioned blood from the field, stitched with speed she didn’t know she had.

Inside, she was screaming.

Her hands knew what to do but brain did not.

“Start compressions. Now!” she snapped. The intern froze.

“I SAID NOW!”

Jaeyi moved to the chest herself, pushing hard and fast. Her whole weight behind it. Her muscles burned. Her shoulders ached. But she didn’t care.

“Defib. 360. Now.”

“Dr. Yoo—”

“I said now!”

“Clear.”

Seulgi jolted once more.

“Come on,” Jaeyi whispered. “You have to come back.”

The monitor responded, a hesitant, stumbling pulse. Fragile. Barely there.

They had her. For now.

She went back in. Her gloves were red to the wrists. Jaeyi sewed like her hands were possessed. Fast. Ruthless. Her hands were the only part of her not falling apart. She didn’t even know what was guiding them anymore. Not training. Not instinct. Just desperation. Because every time her eyes dared flick up to Seulgi’s face, slack, ghost-white, lips tinged blue. Something twisted, sharp and unforgiving, deep in her chest.

That wasn’t Seulgi.

Not the Seulgi who would leave things Jaeyi thought unnecessary but would end up using anyway. Not the Seulgi who kept showing up, outside the hospital, at her lounge, in her dreams, always quiet, always uninvited, always kind. Not the Seulgi who asked for nothing except a truth Jaeyi wouldn’t give.

Not the woman Jaeyi had left behind without a word.

Seulgi had kept reaching. Had kept trying. Even when Jaeyi shut the door. Even when Jaeyi let silence do all the talking. Even when she buried what they were under professionalism and cool distance and empty eyes.

She’d waited.

She’d shown up.

But not now. That Seulgi is gone and Jaeyi was trying to claw her back from the abyss with nothing but thread and trembling hands she tried to keep still as she bit her tongue.

“Her pressure’s dropping again,” someone said.

“Start another line. More blood,” Jaeyi barked.

They moved fast around her. But the air was thick. Heavy. It felt like the walls were closing in. The beeping of the monitor was no longer a sound, it was a scream in her ear. Each time it stuttered, her heart did too.

She was holding a piece of Seulgi’s life between her fingers. Fragile. Slippery. Threatening to tear.

“Jaeyi.”

The voice didn’t belong in the room. It didn’t come from the nurses or the residents or the trauma lead. It came from the far corner. Quiet. Cold. Unmistakable.

Her head snapped up.

He stood there. In his white coat. Hands behind his back. Stern as ever. Watching her

Her father.

Not really. He was dead.

“You can’t” he said.

Jaeyi blinked. The hold she had on the suction visibly trembled.

“You can’t save her” he said again, quieter. Not cruel. Just certain. Like he was stating a fact. Like he was preparing her for the loss. Like he pities her.

“Dr. Yoo?” the anxious voice of a nurse snapped her.

Jaeyi turned back to the table. Bit her tongue hard that she tasted iron to stop her tears from falling and to steady her hands. Her chest was burning. Her lungs were tight. She didn’t look at him again.

“Should we call Dr. Oh Yiyoung for back up?” Jaeyi shook her head, sharp and final. Because if she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure what would come out.

The seconds dragged. Each movement inside the trauma room felt too heavy, too fast. Her gown stuck to her skin. Her mask sucked against her mouth with every shallow breath. It was too much.

Then the monitors went haywire. Again. Seulgi’s coding for the third time. Her father’s word echoing on her head. Jaeyi’s eyes locked on the heart monitor, her pulse spiking in tandem with the screech.

“Start compressions!”

Her voice wasn’t hers anymore. It was hollow. Too loud. Too desperate.

A resident moved fast, straddling the trauma table, pressing hard on Seulgi’s chest. One, two, three.

Each push made Seulgi’s body jolt, and with every impact, Jaeyi flinched like she’d been struck herself.

“Charge. Again!”

She took the paddles. Her hands were wet with blood and sweat. She couldn’t tell which was which anymore.

“Clear.”

Shock.

Nothing.

“Again!” she shouted, more desperate now.

Another shock.

A blip.

Then two. A jagged rhythm struggling to return.

The relief hit Jaeyi like a punch to the stomach. Too fast, too fragile. Her knees nearly buckled. She caught herself with a trembling hand on the gurney.

Back in. With more focus, Jaeyi leaned over Seulgi again, stitching, clamping, shouting orders. Her hands moved. Fast, relentless, automatic. Yet inside, she can’t help but drink the tiny fractures cracking through the dam she’d built over years of silence.

Through every sleepless night. Every avoided memory. Every unanswered call. Every time she’d told herself that leaving was protection. That she was fine. That Seulgi will be fine. That Seulgi should not matter anymore. But she is. She always does. She mattered too much.

Her lungs ached. Her chest burned. Her skin screamed. And yet she moved, as if drowning could be outrun.

A nurse passed her a clamp with shaking fingers. “Doctor Yoo”

“What?” Jaeyi snapped.

“I don’t think she’s—”

“She’s coding again.”

The words came from someone else.

Jaeyi’s throat tightened. Her pulse roared in her ears. She barely heard the flatline this time.

Fourth code.

She felt every eye in the room shift toward her. Waiting. Watching. Hoping. The anesthesiologist spoke the thing none of them wanted to.

"She’s not going to make it."

Jaeyi’s head turned slowly. Her eyes found his. In her own surprise, she didn’t shout. Didn’t lashed out. Just looked at him. Colder than any silence.

“I decide that” she said.

No one dared to speak up again. The air buzzed with the weight of it. The room had bent around her. Not just in awe. Not just in fear. In disbelief.

Because somehow, in the middle of this horror, she was still moving like a machine. No hesitation. No flinch. Her hands precise in their eyes. Her voice clear. Her orders swift.

But like Seulgi, she was bleeding inside.

“Defib. 300. Charge”

Seulgi jolted. The table shook.

There was a pulse right away. But Seulgi’s skin looked worse now. Waxen. Hollow. Her lips cracked. Her jaw slack. Still Jaeyi moved. Still, she fought. Clamp. Suture. Pressure. A cycle until the situation is turning on their table. Everyone watched Jaeyi as if she’s performing a miracle. In a way, she is. 

Jaeyi had been in this instance countless of time. She was built for it. Trained, disciplined, forged in pressure. Her body knew what to do even when her mind stuttered. Every fiber of her being remembered how to move, how to save, how to survive. But this was different. She had never been this afraid.

They scrambled. Packed the wounds. Clamped what they could, closed what they had to. The room pulsed with shouted commands and beeping machines. Jaeyi’s hands moved on autopilot while her mind was back on that monitor, cursing it. Watching every dip in rhythm like it was personal.

Every second stretched into forever. Suture. Hemostat. Another bleeder tied off.

"Vitals stabilizing," someone said.

"BP holding."

"She’s responding."

There was a beat, a breathless, collective moment where the tension in the room eased just slightly. A nurse exhaled. The trauma lead stepped back to reassess. For a second, it felt like they might make it out of this.

Jaeyi’s eyes remained locked on the monitor, refusing to blink. Her hands paused mid-movement, coated in Seulgi’s blood, hovering over the last suture like she wasn’t sure it was real.

It should’ve felt like relief.

It didn’t.

There was something off. Subtle, quiet, a wrongness she couldn’t place, gnawing at her like a loose thread in the dark. A sense in her gut that she’d been in this exact place before. Where things looked better. Felt better.

The monitor spiked. Again. Jaeyi stilled. A sound came off after. Too familiar sound. A long, shrill note.

Flatline.

“No,” she whispered, before she even realized she’d said it.

The sound tore through the room like a blade. Her vision narrowed. The overhead lights blurred. All sound, the nurses, the beeping, the calls for equipment, sucked inward, as if the world was holding its breath with her.

“Fifth code,” someone said grimly.

No one moved fast enough.

“Start compressions!” Jaeyi barked. Her voice broke on the last syllable.

A resident stepped in. He began pumping Seulgi’s chest. Each compression made her body jolt. Each one made Jaeyi flinch.

“Get the paddles. Charge to 200,” she said, her voice hoarse.

A nurse handed them over. Jaeyi gripped the defibrillator paddles, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Slippery with blood and sweat, the paddles almost slipped from her grasp. She clenched harder.

“Clear.”

Shock. Seulgi’s body arched and fell.

Nothing.

Still a flatline.

“Charge to 250.”

“Doctor—”

“To 250!” Jaeyi snapped. There was hesitation. A look between the nurses. Then the machine beeped.

“Clear!”

Shock. A twitch. A pause. Still flat. The room quieted.

A subtle shift. A resignation in the air. Someone murmured for time of death protocol. Someone else stepped toward her, slow and careful, like she was a wounded animal.

“She’s gone,” one of the residents said softly, reaching for her elbow. “Doctor Yoo—”

“No.”

Jaeyi shook her head, violently. Her eyes were wide, wet. Almost feral.

“No, she’s not. Charge again.”

“Doctor Yoo—”

“I said charge again!” she screamed. The sound fractured through the room like a crack of thunder. Even the trauma leads flinched.

No one moved. For a breathless moment, the OR stood frozen.

Then the paddles were handed to her again.

“300. Clear.”

Shock.

Seulgi didn’t move this time. Her body just lay there. Limp. Unmoving. Her skin cooling beneath the layers of blood and gauze.

Still, Jaeyi didn’t stop.

“Charge again!”

A nurse touched her shoulder. “Doctor Yoo, she’s gone. You’ve done everything you could—”

“I haven’t!” Jaeyi’s voice cracked open. She didn’t care how she sounded. She didn’t care about the rules, the silence, the stillness. “She’s right here. She’s right here!”

Tears blurred her vision, and her knees nearly buckled under the weight of the moment. Her coat was soaked, her gloves sticky with sweat and blood, and her heart—her heart was breaking with each second the monitor stayed dead.  

She looked down at Seulgi’s face. Pale. Slack. Peaceful in a way that felt wrong. Cruel.

“Please,” she whispered to no one. To everyone. To Seulgi. “Not like this. Please.”

She leaned in again. Hands on Seulgi’s chest. Her voice dropped, desperate and raw.

“I’m not losing you here”

She hovered there for a beat longer, every part of her aching, as if she could will Seulgi back through proximity alone.

Then her jaw locked. Shoulders squared.

“Charge again,” she said.

A few nurses exchanged uncertain looks.

“Dr. Yoo—”

“360” Her voice was cold now. Absolute. A command no one dared challenge. The paddles hissed to life in her hands.

“Clear.”

She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch. Her eyes were dry now, fever bright. Her jaw clenched.

Shock.

Seulgi’s body jerked slightly, only slightly. Then fell still.

The room went silent. More than silent. It froze.

No one moved.

Eyes turned in unison to the monitor. Its flat green line mocked them.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Jaeyi’s heart was a drum inside her chest. Too loud. Too fragile. Every beat dared the world to keep going.

Four.

Her mouth parted slightly, breath suspended in her throat. Her hands had fallen away from the paddles and now hung useless at her sides, stained red, twitching.

Five.

A nurse gripped the rail of the bed, knuckles white. A resident behind her had quietly begun to cry. The trauma lead closed his eyes.

Six.

A Beep.

Jaeyi’s head snapped toward the screen.

Beep.

Stronger.

Beep. Beep.

A rhythm. A pulse.

The green line, flat for too long, now bounced with fragile life.

“Sinus rhythm returning,” someone whispered, the disbelief cracking through.

“BP climbing. Holding at 92—”

“She’s back!” cried another.

A sound burst out of Jaeyi. Not a sob, not quite a gasp. Just a broken sound of release as her knees nearly gave out. She caught herself on the edge of the bed and sagged forward.

The noise in the room returned all at once. Nurses scrambled to stabilize vitals. The monitor beeped in steady rhythm now, relentless and precious.

Jaeyi pressed the back of her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. The sob never came, but the relief was a tidal wave. She bit her tongue again, grounding herself, making sure she hadn’t imagined it.

She looked down. Seulgi’s chest rose with a shallow breath.

She was breathing.

Alive.

Jaeyi backed away from the table like a ghost, as if afraid she might break whatever fragile thread was keeping Seulgi tethered to this world.

The OR team started their cleanup quietly, murmuring instructions, calling for post-op orders. But Jaeyi didn’t hear them. She couldn’t. Her ears were ringing.

All she could see was the faint green line on the monitor, the fragile heartbeat ticking across it like a ghost refusing to go.

She’d been on her feet for nearly twelve hours straight. Her body screamed for rest. Her back throbbed. Her knees ached. Her fingers were numb from strain. But the worst ache was deep in her chest. A hollow, gnawing pressure that pulsed with every breath.

She peeled off her gloves slowly, like they were made of lead. Red smeared across her wrists, under her nails. She tried not to look at it.

She couldn’t stop seeing Seulgi’s chest rise with the shocks, the defibrillator pads burning her skin. Couldn’t stop hearing the flatlines. Couldn’t stop remembering the exact second Seulgi’s pulse returned. And vanished. Returned. And vanished again

Code after code after code.

It haunted her already.

She stepped outside the OR and leaned against the corridor wall, just outside the recovery room. Her palms pressed flat to the cold, sterile surface as if it could hold her up. Her head dropped. Her breathing shook.

She was dizzy. Her vision blurred. Her throat tightened with something thick and unspoken.

And then she lifted her gaze, drawn, unwillingly to the small window of the room door. There she was.

Seulgi.

Pale. Still. Her face drained of all the color that once made her feel so alive. Tubes down her throat. Lines in her neck. IVs snaked through both arms. A machine breathed for her. Another pumped medication into her veins. Beeping monitors surrounded her like sentinels, watching, waiting, guarding what little was left of her life.

She looked like a ghost. A body carved out of memory and grief.

And Jaeyi felt like something inside her had cracked open.

“Unless you’re dying, let’s not meet again.”

The words returned, sharp and venomous. The very word she never meant to say, and Seulgi had come back to her exactly like that.

No. Worse.

Dead. Five times.

Five times Jaeyi had pulled her back from the brink. Five times she’d watched the monitor flatten. Five times she thought she’d lost her forever.

The tears didn’t come back suddenly. They didn’t fall in a dramatic wave. They gathered, slow and thick, behind her eyes, burning. Her jaw clenched. Her chest hitched with a sound she didn’t recognize.

She slid down the wall until she was on the floor, legs folding beneath her like they no longer had the strength to carry the weight of what she'd just done. Her hands clutched the fabric of her pants, still wet with Seulgi’s blood, as if she needed to hold onto something, anything, that felt real.

She didn’t care who saw her like this.

Not the interns hurrying past. Not the nurses whispering down the hall. Not the attending who briefly stopped, recognized the look in her eyes, and silently kept walking.

She didn’t care about her spotless reputation

She didn’t care the familiar ghost around the corner watching her.

She had nearly lost Seulgi. For real. And Jaeyi didn’t know how she was supposed to survive that.

She drew her knees to her chest, resting her forehead against them, blood still on her scrubs. The smell of it lingered everywhere. The memory of Seulgi’s name screamed over the intercom still rang in her ears.

In that hallway, Jaeyi finally let herself break, quietly, utterly, with no one to stop her.

Chapter Text

Seulgi was transferred to the ICU after. Jaeyi remained in the waiting area, still in her scrubs. Her head throbbed, but she barely registered the pain, lost in a daze. Her eyes were red from crying, her throat dry and raw. She didn’t know what to do next. She couldn’t bring herself to sit at Seulgi’s bedside either.

Her phone buzzed with an alarm, snapping her out of the fog for a moment. She silenced it, and a flicker of thought passed through her. She opened her contacts.

Yeri. Kyung.

The two people she and Seulgi had trusted like family. Old friends from when life had been simpler, before everything fell apart.

Her finger hovered over Yeri’s name. The screen glared up at her, accusing. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since the day she left Seulgi behind.

Her hand trembled as she hit dial.

It rang once. Twice.

“Uh, who the hell is calling at—” Yeri’s voice cracked over the line, half-asleep, unmistakably grumpy. Then sharper, “Wait, is this—Jaeyi?”

In the background, Kyung’s voice chimed in, groggy and annoyed. “Tell whoever it is to hang up or bring coffee.”

Jaeyi swallowed. “It’s me.”

Silence. Thick and sudden.

“What the hell?” Yeri blurted. “You fall off the face of the earth for years and now you just—what? Decide to call at 3 a.m.?”

“Is it really her?” Kyung’s voice cut in, in disbelief. “Put it on speaker.”

Yeri didn’t respond, but Jaeyi could hear the fumbling of the screen and then both voices came through louder.

“You’ve got some nerve, you know that?” Yeri snapped. “After the way you ghosted us? After what you did to Seulgi?”

Jaeyi flinched. “I know.”

Kyung’s tone was cooler, but no less sharp. “What do you want right now? A company? Someone you can use and leave when things go south? Honestly Yeri, why did you even answer her call?”

“I’m sorry,” Jaeyi said, voice trembling. “I just really don’t know what else to do.”

That sobered them slightly. The edge in Yeri’s voice wavered. “What’s going on?”

“Seulgi.” Jaeyi paused, bracing herself. “She was on the Emergency surgery. She-”

The line went dead silent. All the irritation vanished, burned away by fear.

“What?” Kyung whispered. “Wait—what?”

“She’s stable. For now. But it was close. Too close.” Jaeyi’s voice cracked, and she hated herself for it.

Yeri’s voice was a whisper now, small and raw. “Where is she?”

“J Medical Center.” Jaeyi wiped her face, though no tears had fallen.

“Please. Just be there. I couldn’t— I just— “

Yeri beat her to it “We’re on our way.”

Jaeyi didn’t move. She just stared at the phone in her hand, her grip loose, like her fingers had forgotten how to hold on. Then she lowered it to her lap and sat still, the weight of everything settling over her.

That was when she understood why she couldn’t go in and sit beside Seulgi. It wasn’t fear of seeing her like that, fragile and still. It’s because she believed she no longer had the right to be by Seulgi’s side.

Jaeyi woke to something gentle brushing against her cheek, like the lightest feather stroke. She stirred, disoriented, eyes fluttering open to soft, pale morning light filtering through her office blinds. Her body ached from where she’d slumped over her desk, arms curled beneath her head. A faint line from a binder ring was indented on her cheek.

She blinked, disoriented. The silence was too perfect. Her body too still. Then she felt it. A weight in the air. A presence.

She straightened slowly, breath catching. Someone was beside her. Someone familiar.

Her heart stopped. Then stuttered back to life.

Leaning casually against the side of her desk, slouched slightly in that way only she did, stood Seulgi.

Jaeyi’s breath hitched sharply in her throat. Her entire body went still.

It couldn’t be. But it was. Seulgi was watching her. Not saying a word. Just standing there. Like she'd been waiting. Like she'd been there a while. And God, she was glowing. The soft sunlight wrapped around her like silk, catching in her hair, gilding her skin. Her lips, no longer dry and cracked was curved into the smallest smile. One Jaeyi hadn’t seen in years but had never forgotten. It was the smile that always made her feel like she was the only person in the world worth looking at.

Her hair was down, gently messy at the ends. Her hospital gown clung loosely to her shoulders, the pale blue making the healthy warmth in her cheeks stand out even more. Her eyes were open. Clear, deep, full of something almost impossible to name. She looked like the first breath after drowning. Like spring in a dying world.

“Seulgi?” Jaeyi whispered. Her voice was hoarse. Unsure. Disbelieving.

Last thing she remembered, she was fighting for her life. Screaming for a heartbeat. Shocking a still chest over and over until her hands shook and her knees buckled.  And now here she was. So alive. So impossibly here.

Jaeyi wanted to cry. To collapse. To fall into her and never let go. But she didn’t move. Neither did Seulgi. They just looked at each other. The whole world shrunk to this sliver of silence. This room, this gaze, Jaeyi’s heart beat so loudly she could hear it in her ears. Her lungs ached from how long she’d held her breath. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms, trying to ground herself.

Just then Seulgi’s smile changed. Faltered. She broke eye contact and began to walk away.

“Seulgi?” Jaeyi breathed, a whisper torn from her throat. Her legs moved before her mind could catch up. She shot to her feet so fast her vision whited out. She swayed, nausea rushing up, but she didn’t mind. She stumbled through the doorway, heart pounding, her voice rising.

“Seulgi! Wait!”

The hallway outside her office was long. Golden. Empty. Except for her. Seulgi was there, her back turned, walking slowly, barefoot. Gown brushing her legs. Hair swaying slightly with each step. She didn’t turn around.

“Seulgi!” Jaeyi’s voice broke. She reached out a trembling hand. “Please, wait!”

But Seulgi didn’t look back.

She turned a corner. Jaeyi sprinted, feet slapping the floor, tears blurring her vision. She didn’t care. She had to reach her. Had to hold her. When she rounded the corner, she collided into something solid. Hard. She stumbled back a step and froze. Her blood turned to ice.

Her father.

Standing tall in a white coat. Impeccably dressed. Hands folded behind his back like he always did when delivering bad news. His eyes sharp. Cold. Empty.

Jaeyi’s mouth parted, but no sound came.

He tilted his head. Looked at her like she was small.

“You failed,” he said simply.

Jaeyi shook her head, breath faltering.

“You can’t save her,” he said again, softer this time.

“No.” Jaeyi’s voice cracked. Her chest constricted.

He stepped forward and everything around her changed. The walls closed in. The lights dimmed. The floor seemed to fall away. Every inch of her screamed to run, but she couldn’t move.

“You did and it was your fault. For coming back”

Jaeyi gasped. The air was too thin. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

“No!” she rasped.

“You are being punished Jaeyi” His voice echoed. Multiplied. “It was your fault.”

Her knees gave out. Darkness swallowed her whole. When she got her voice back, she screamed.

And woke up.

She jolted upright, gasping, her lungs dragging in air like she’d been underwater.

Pain flared in her arm, a needle. An IV line. She blinked fast, panicked.

No golden light now. It was dim, sterile. Familiar. Real. She was in her private lounge. On the recliner. A blanket half-draped over her lap. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Her skin was damp with sweat. Her fingers trembled.

“Jaeyi?” A voice cut through the haze. She turned sharply.

Jena was there, rushing to her side, concern written across her face.

“You’re awake,” she breathed.

Jaeyi blinked, dizzy, lost, too many memories bleeding together.

Her eyes darted to the door.

No father.

No Seulgi.

“Seulgi,” Jaeyi whispered, barely audible.

“She’s okay,” Jena said quickly, grabbing her wrist as she tried to move. “She made it through. You did good, Jaeyi. You saved her.”

But Jaeyi wasn’t listening. Her dream still clung to her skin like smoke. Her father’s voice still echoed in her skull, condemning, bitter. And Seulgi’s soft and angelic, yet far away, like she was already on the other side.

“No,” Jaeyi muttered. “I need to see her. I need—” She shifted too fast. Her vision spun, white noise rising in her ears.

“Don’t. Wait, Jaeyi, stop.”

But she was already pulling the IV out of her arm, hissing under her breath as the sting of it brought her into full awareness. Blood welled briefly at the crook of her elbow. She pressed a towel to it and pushed off the recliner, barefoot, unsteady, but determined.

“You’re still recovering. You passed out. You haven't eaten in nearly two days,” Jena warned, stepping in front of her. “Just rest a little longer. Please.”

“I need to see her,” Jaeyi repeated, her voice low, hoarse. “Please unnie”

Jena’s jaw clenched. She looked like she was fighting with herself.

“If you go now, you might run into Kyung and Yeri.”

Jaeyi froze mid-step. Her breath hitched. The names hit harder than she expected. Her throat tightened.

“They’re here?” she whispered.

“You called them before you collapsed. Don’t you remember?”

Jaeyi blinked. Memory fluttered back, shaky fingers dialing an old number, a voice answering through her tears. It had felt like a dream.

“Oh.” Her voice cracked.

Shame licked at her throat. She wasn’t ready to face them. She didn’t know if she ever would be. But that didn’t matter now. Not if it meant seeing Seulgi again.

“But unnie, if I don’t see her now,” Jaeyi murmured, more to herself than to Jena, “I won’t forgive myself.”

Jena hesitated. “Then let’s go”

“No.” Jaeyi shook her head. “I need to do this alone.”

Jena looked like she wanted to protest but didn’t. Instead, she reached out, gently brushing Jaeyi’s hair behind her ear, the gesture quiet and heartbreaking. “Alright.”

Jaeyi nodded, holding the towel against her arm, and turned toward the hall.

The hospital corridors felt colder than usual. Brighter. Every light overhead buzzed too loudly. Nurses and residents glanced at her, startled by her appearance. Barefoot, pale, hair clinging to her temples, blood still soaking through the towel at her elbow. But no one stopped her.

Her pace quickened as she entered the ICU corridor. At the far end of the hallway, through a wide glass partition, she saw her. Seulgi. Pale, still, cocooned in wires and tubes.

Jaeyi froze mid-step. Her breath stuttered in her throat. Her hand instinctively gripped the edge of the wall. She took a cautious step closer. Then another. Her eyes didn’t blink. She kept watching Seulgi’s chest rise and fall, slow, mechanical. The monitor light beeped in rhythm.

Then a shadow moved. Someone else was inside the room. Not a nurse. Not a doctor. Not Kyung nor Yeri. A man. Standing near Seulgi’s bed. Arms crossed behind him, posture too composed. Face hidden by the angle, but every inch of his frame carved from memory.

Her father. Again. He stood like he had in her dream. Just as silent. Just as still.

“Dad,” she breathed, the sound barely leaving her lips.

And then her body moved before her brain could stop it. She ran.

“Dr. Yoo!” a nurse rushed into her path, catching her by the arm before she could yank the door open.

She turned, wild-eyed, heart pounding in her throat.

It was a nurse, young, also startled. “Dr. Yoo, I’m sorry, you need to change into proper scrubs first. ICU protocol. You’re not prepped and” Her eyes flicked to the bloodied towel. “You’re injured.”

Jaeyi turned, breathless, disoriented. Her eyes darted back toward the room through the glass. The man, her father, or whoever she thought she saw, was gone. Just the faint reflection of medical equipment on the glass now. Her knees buckled slightly. She gripped the doorframe to steady herself.

“I’m fine,” she said, though her voice trembled.

The nurse softened. “I know. Just a moment. Please, let me get you a clean set. You can go in right after.”

Jena stepped up beside her. She had followed her, of course she did.

“She’s stable,” Jena said quietly, like a reassurance meant to anchor. “She is recovering well. If things continue this way, she’ll be transferred to a regular room by the end of the week.”

Jaeyi didn’t answer. Her eyes hadn’t moved from the bed.

Through the glass, Seulgi lay as if caught between worlds, still and suspended, wrapped in pale hospital sheets that swallowed the sharpness of her figure. Her body looked smaller than Jaeyi remembered.

The soft rise and fall of Seulgi’s chest were visible through the glass, steady but labored. A thin plastic mask was fitted over her nose and mouth, its sides fogging faintly with each breath. Thin medical tape secured the lines along her cheeks and jaw. The tubing curved behind her ears, disappearing into a nearby machine that exhaled in sync with her.

Her face was pale. The usual warm tone of her skin dulled under the sterile light. Another tube was threaded through her nose, taped carefully at her temple and trailing down toward the sheets, disappearing beneath the folds of the blanket. Her arms, laid neatly at her sides, were a network of connections, IV lines taped to both forearms, saline and medication flowing in steady drips from suspended bags above. A soft monitor cuff wrapped her upper arm, inflating every few minutes with a quiet mechanical hum.

Electrodes dotted her chest under her hospital gown, wires running to the monitor that flashed gentle peaks and valleys in green and yellow. Her heart was slow but steady. A pulse oximeter clipped to her finger blinked with quiet persistence. And on her left hand, a faint tremor, barely noticeable, flickered before stilling again, swallowed by the silence of sedation.

Her body was fighting. Carefully supported by every machine, every tube, and every inch of sterile tape. The room held her like something precious and fragile.

Jaeyi stood frozen, her breath catching behind her ribs. She watched, eyes tracing every line, every rise and fall, trying to make sense of this version of Seulgi.

Her hair had been brushed and tucked behind her ears by one of the nurses. Someone had taken time to clean her up, wiped the dried blood from her skin, change the gown, adjust the sheets. But the pallor in her complexion, the faint bruises near her clavicle, the darkening rings under her eyes, they were reminders. She had been close. Too close.

But still, she was unmistakably Seulgi. Even in sleep, even in a fight for her life, there was something striking about her. Still beautiful. Still wholly her.

Jaeyi didn’t realize she was holding her breath until a soft click from the monitor made her flinch. Her chest hitched. Then slowly, quietly, she exhaled.

The sound was barely audible, but it escaped her like something precious. Her shoulders fell, slightly. Her fingers, which had been balled into fists, loosened. A shaky relief swept through her body, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

She hadn’t lost her.

That truth landed with a force greater than anything the monitors could measure. A truth so raw it scraped against her ribs. She hadn’t failed. She saved her.

And yet, that guilt. That ugly, ancient guilt never left. It crouched at her feet like a shadow, reminding her that saving someone didn’t always mean healing them. That she had once abandoned Seulgi without a goodbye. And that no surgery in the world could mend the kind of wound she'd left behind.

She reached out, her fingers hovering inches from the glass, wanting so badly to close the distance. Just to touch. To say something. Anything. But her hand fell limp at her side. She took a half-step back.

Jena’s brows furrowed, quiet confusion painting her face as Jaeyi turned away from the window.

“Where are you going this time?” she asked gently, a question loaded with more than its surface meaning

“I just,” Jaeyi shook her head, eyes unfocused. “I need a moment. I need to breathe.”

Jena didn’t argue. She simply watched as Jaeyi backed away, gaze dropping to the floor, as if the tiles themselves might anchor her from the flood surging beneath her.

She walked back down the corridor, away from the light, away from Seulgi, one trembling hand still pressed over the towel at her elbow.

Jena followed a few steps behind, eyes narrowed with quiet worry, but didn’t ask anything. Not yet. She’d known Jaeyi long enough to recognize when the questions would only make her crumble. So, she simply walked with her.

Chapter Text

Three days after being transferred to a regular room, Seulgi stirred awake beneath the honeyed gold of late afternoon light filtering through half-closed blinds.

The world returned in fragments.

First came the beeping, steady. Then the weight in her limbs, the dull pressure around her chest, and the scratch in her throat. Her breath came slow and shallow, like her lungs weren’t entirely her own yet.

She blinked against the light, trying to focus. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar. Stark white. A vent hummed somewhere overhead. Hospital. She was in a hospital.

It took longer for her to remember why.

A sharp breath hitched in her throat. The memory came in jagged, scattered pieces. Not all at once, but in pieces.

The sting of sweat in her eyes. The sharp, chemical sting of gunpowder in the air. Her, yelling to drop the weapon. The thud of boots on concrete. A flash of movement.

She remembered raising her gun. She remembered the suspect’s lips parting, the slow lift of his arm, the gleam of metal. Then the sound, a flat, awful crack, and the world turned sideways.

A jolt bloomed through her chest. Hot and blinding. Like her ribs had shattered inward. She had stumbled, no, fallen. She heard voice afterwards. Distant. Drenched in panic. Yelling her name. Byeongjin.

Her chest rose in a tremble, rattling faintly with effort. A tube was taped to her skin, pulling gently at her mouth. She could taste oxygen, cold and metallic. She wanted to speak but found her voice caught somewhere in her throat, raw and useless.

The scrape of a chair broke the stillness.

“Seulgi?”

Kyung’s voice, sharp with disbelief, cracking around the edges. She stood abruptly, the chair groaning back beneath her.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, still sleepy. A mess of tension loosened from her shoulders as she surged forward, only barely stopping herself from reaching out.

“You’re awake. Jesus, you’re actually—” she fumbled for the nurse call button with shaky fingers. “Don’t move, okay? I’m getting someone. Just—just don’t move.”

Seulgi’s eyes fluttered toward her, but the rest of her body stayed frozen. Still trying to catch up to everything she now remembered and everything she still didn’t.

Then, the door opened with a soft push.

A tall woman entered, someone Seulgi didn’t recognize. Her presence was calm but decisive. The white coat she wore swayed with each step. She held a clipboard like it was part of her body.

“Officer Woo,” she greeted gently, her voice practiced but warm. “I’m Dr. Oh Yiyoung. I’ve been overseeing your care since your transfer to this unit.”

Seulgi blinked at her, eyes heavy and unfocused.

“You were out for like two weeks,” Kyung chimed in from her corner of the room. Her voice was quieter than usual but carried that familiar bluntness.

Dr. Oh nodded. “You were moved from ICU three days ago. You’ve been under deep sedation since the surgery. Your vitals stabilized last week, and we’ll take things slowly from here.”

She stepped closer, flipping through the chart, then returned her attention to Seulgi.

“Let’s run a quick neurological assessment.”

What followed felt like a checklist of reminders that her body still worked. Light in her eyes. Fingers squeezing. Toes wiggling. A slow lift of one hand, then the other. The commands were simple but carrying them out was like dragging herself through wet sand. Her limbs responded, but they didn’t feel like hers.

Kyung stood silently the entire time. Arms crossed over her chest. Her expression was hard to read, somewhere between tension and distance.

Dr. Oh finally stepped back and rested the chart against her hip. “Good response. There’s pain, but that’s expected,” she said, her voice calm, clinical. “You sustained significant internal damage. We had to re-expand your lung and repair several vascular tears. It was extensive.”

Her gaze dropped briefly to the floor, then lifted again with a quieter tone. “According to some of the staff, it was a miracle you made it through. You were gone for like, five times.”

Seulgi felt something lurch in her chest. Five times. The words echoed, sharp and disorienting. Then her eyes caught it. Stitched in dark thread over the left pocket of Dr. Oh’s coat.

J Medical Center.

A rush of cold washed through her. Her lips parted before she could stop herself.

“Jaeyi,” she breathed. Then, louder, her voice cracked with something raw. “Did Jaeyi know I was here?”

A quiet pause stretched across the room.

Dr. Oh’s expression faltered. Her gaze flicked subtly to Kyung, who didn’t react. Then back to Seulgi. The room stilled.

“Yes,” Dr. Oh said softly, carefully.

She hesitated for a breath. Then, “In fact, it’s fair to say you wouldn’t be here if not for her. She was Dr. Yoo Jaeyi, after all.”

The name hit like a stone dropped in still water, rippling outward, impossible to contain. Seulgi’s breath caught. Her fingers clenched faintly over the blanket. Her throat burned.

“She—” Seulgi couldn’t finish the sentence. Her voice gave out.

She turned her face slightly toward the window, toward the pale, late-afternoon light stretching across the tiles

“Five times, you said?” Her voice was a rasp, barely audible, meant more for herself than anyone else. “She watched me die five times?”

The silence that followed was heavy. Pressing.

Kyung didn’t speak. Her silence wasn’t sympathy, it was distant, deliberate. Cold, in a way Seulgi hadn’t felt in years.

Dr. Oh took that as her cue to leave. “I’ll give you some time. The nursing staff will check in shortly.” Her voice gentled again before she stepped away. “You’re doing better than expected Officer Woo. Just focus on resting.”

As the door clicked shut behind her, silence reclaimed the room.

Kyung didn’t sit. She stayed standing, watching Seulgi.

Seulgi finally turned toward her, the movement slow, dragging against every sore muscle and healing wound. “Did she come by?”

Kyung’s mouth twitched, just a faint movement. Not a smile. Not even close. “No,” she said quietly, her voice clipped. “She didn’t.”

A bitter breath escaped Seulgi’s throat, half a laugh, half something else entirely. “Of course,” she said, her lips curling faintly. “That’s fair.”

She swallowed down the tightness rising in her throat. Her fingers curled into the edge of the blanket. “Did you talk to her?”

“Not with me at least.” Kyung hesitated “But Yeri might have”

The knock was soft. Not hesitant, not polite. Just final. Like whoever was behind it had already decided they were coming in.

Jaeyi didn’t look up. Her pen dragged slowly across the page. Chart? journal? textbook? It didn’t matter. She was drowning in data, in silence, in anything but thought.

The door creaked open anyway.

Yeri stepped in, framed by the pale hallway light. A plastic bag hung from one hand, a boxed meal in the other. She scanned the room once, then Jaeyi, and sighed.

“You haven’t eaten,” Yeri said, voice flat. “Figured.”

She didn’t wait for an invitation. The boxed meal hit the desk with a soft thud, followed by the clink of a cup of tea. Not coffee. Jaeyi’s favorite, years ago. She didn’t reach for it. But her pen stopped mid-stroke.

Yeri placed her hands on her hips, exhaled hard through her nose. “You’re not even going to pretend this time, huh?”

Still nothing. No greeting. No glance.

Yeri laughed. It was hollow, sharp-edged. “You really haven’t changed.”

She leaned back against the desk beside the untouched meal, arms crossed, gaze fixed somewhere on the floor. The silence between them stretched. Like a rubber band about to snap.

“I should’ve said something the first time I came here,” Yeri muttered. “Or when you called. God knows I wanted to. But I was too busy trying not to scream.”

Jaeyi finally moved, just a flick of her eyes upward. “How did you get in? This is a private lounge”

Yeri scoffed. “Does it matter?”

Jaeyi didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Her silence was her wall.

Yeri took a step forward, her voice flat but rising. “How long do you plan to ignore us? Until Seulgi’s in a coffin, ready for her funeral?”

Jaeyi’s eyes darkened. The pen slipped from her fingers and hit the desk with a dull clatter. Her voice, when it came, was sharp, cutting. Defensive. Almost a warning.
“What?”

“I shouldn’t say it,” Yeri said tightly, jaw clenched. “But I will.”

She turned her back on Jaeyi and started pacing slowly, like the words burned in her mouth and she needed movement to force them out.

“Maybe it would’ve been easier if Seulgi had died. At least it would’ve been over.”

The words ignited something in Jaeyi.

“Yah! Jo Yeri!” she snapped, voice cracking like a whip across the room. She rose so fast the chair scraped harshly behind her.

“Do you hear yourself right now?!” she growled, teeth clenched, shoulders squared. Her fists trembled at her sides, fury curling through her like smoke. She looked like the old Jaeyi. Proud, fierce, unshakable. Ready for a fight.

But Yeri didn’t flinch. She stopped mid-room and turned, meeting Jaeyi’s with something colder. Something heavier.

“Yeah, I hear myself,” she said, almost whispering now, eyes boring into Jaeyi’s. “Do you?”

A beat.

“Jaeyi” Yeri walked towards her, eyes holding Jaeyi’s furious gaze.

“Seulgi died the day you left,” she said, her voice suddenly quieter, lower, cutting sharper for it. “You just weren’t around to see it.”

Jaeyi froze. Her breath caught. Then held. Her fists loosened slightly at her sides.

“You didn’t watch her kill herself in pieces every damn day”

Jaeyi’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard. Her fingers twitched, unsure if they wanted to reach for something or shatter everything in their path.

Yeri’s voice cracked, but she kept going, fierce with grief. “Do you even know what she did to herself, waiting for you? The ways she tried to hurt herself without ever putting a gun to her head?”

Jaeyi broke eye contact. Her gaze fell to the floor, to the meal Yeri had brought to the untouched tea. Anywhere but Yeri’s eyes.

“She tried to ruin herself, Jaeyi,” Yeri continued, stepping even closer now, like she needed Jaeyi to feel every word.

“She stopped going home. Lived out of her car for week, because she was waiting for you outside of the old apartment you shared. She only stopped when somebody else moved in”

Jaeyi’s lips parted. Just slightly but no words came. Her eyes stayed fixed on a spot on the floor, as if the truth might disappear.

Yeri stared at her, jaw clenched. “She started picking fights on calls, you know? Volunteering for the worst ones. Suicides, drug busts, hostage situations. Anything reckless. Anything that might hurt.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “She said it helped her feel something. Or nothing. I don’t even know which was worse.”

Her voice cracked as she kept going. “She came back once with broken ribs. Barely breathing. Refused medical leave like it was a punishment she earned.”

Jaeyi didn’t react at first. But then Yeri hit harder.

“You should’ve seen her the night Kyung found her in that shitty rundown bar. She’d downed six shots in under twenty minutes. Wasn’t even drunk. Just quiet. Still. Like she didn’t want to be drunk. Like she wanted to feel every second of being alive and hate herself for it.”

Jaeyi flinched. Visibly this time. But she still didn’t speak.

Yeri’s voice softened, but the rage underneath it never left. “And through all of it,” she said, voice shaking, “she never blamed you. Not once. Not even when it would’ve been easier to.”

“She just kept putting herself back together,” she whispered. “After every fall. Every fight. Every blackout night. She stopped drinking. Started running again. Took every overtime shift they offered. Came home only to shower and go back out. Like if she just kept going, kept moving, you’d come back.”

Yeri swallowed thickly. “And she didn’t want you to see her broken, Jaeyi. She kept telling herself, ‘I’ll be better when she sees me again. I’ll be okay by then.’”

A pause. The air hung thick, choking.

“She was trying to fix the same life she was tearing apart.”

Yeri’s voice dropped, raw and ragged. “Because she thought maybe, maybe, you’d forgive her for something she didn’t even understand. Something none of us ever fucking understood when it was you who left.”

Jaeyi stay muted. Her face was pale, almost colorless. Her jaw trembled. Her whole body was drawn so tight it looked like a single breath might snap her in half. But her eyes shimmered. With grief. With shame. With something that had no name.

“She died five times on your watch” Yeri continued.

“Five. Times. And you—you were the one who brought her back each time. They said you fought like hell. That you were covered in blood. That you screamed at everybody because you can’t fucking lose her, could you?”

Her breath caught, shallow and sharp. Her silence was full of noise. Panic, guilt, memory. She could still see Seulgi’s body arching under the defibrillator, still feel the rib cracking under her palm. Still hear herself scream for suction, for clamps, for anything that could stop the blood. Anything that could save her.

“She was gone, Jaeyi. Gone. And you pulled her back. Again, and again.” Yeri continued, trembling. “Because you couldn’t let go.”

Something twisted deep in Jaeyi’s chest. Because it was true.

Every code, every flatline, every desperate second, she hadn’t fought as Dr. Yoo. She fought as Jaeyi. Someone who didn’t just want Seulgi to live but needed her to.

“And now?” Yeri said, almost laughing but it came out jagged and wet. “Now you sit here. Hiding? As if she’s not out there waiting for you?”

Jaeyi shut her eyes. Tight. Like that would stop the flood pressing behind them.

Yeri stepped even closer, until barely a foot stood between them. Her voice was low now, but it cut through the air like a knife.

“She waited for you, Jaeyi. Every goddamn day after you left.”

A beat. Long enough to hurt.

“And every day, she died for it.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. It didn’t settle. It pressed. Heavy, suffocating.

Jaeyi didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her shoulders trembled, barely, but it was enough. Her jaw was clenched so tightly her teeth ached, and her eyes, wide, red-rimmed, glistening, refused to blink. The tears didn’t fall. They just sat there. Heavy, unshed, like the grief hadn’t figured out what shape it wanted to take yet.

Yeri didn’t give her time to breathe.

“You didn’t just leave her,” she said, almost gently now. Too gently. “You unmade her.”

The words landed with a quiet violence.

“And yet, you fought to keep her alive not because it was your duty nor because you were proud of what you’d become but because you couldn’t bear the thought of losing the girl you abandoned.”

Jaeyi’s hand slowly curled into a fist. Her chest rose, once, in a breath that never fully made it out.

Yeri’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s the cruelest part, Jaeyi. Not that you left. But that some part of you still loved her. Enough to save her body but not stay for her soul.”

A long pause. A terrible one.

“And it wasn’t just Seulgi,” Yeri added, wiping her face roughly with the sleeve of her jacket. “We waited for you too.”

That hit harder than it should have. Jaeyi blinked, finally, as if her ears hadn’t trusted what they just heard.

“I told Kyung you’d come back,” Yeri continued, voice shaking. “Week after week, I told her to hold on. That you’d appear out of nowhere”

A bitter smile twisted her lips. “Until she doesn’t believe it anymore. Until I don’t”

Another breath passed, jagged.

“I dropped off your food,” she muttered, nodding at the desk where the boxed meal sat, untouched and already cooling. “Eat it. Or don’t. Starve, for all I care.”

Her voice said she didn’t care but he cracking throat said otherwise.

She turned before Jaeyi could answer. Her back was stiff, her shoulders pulled tight with all the anger she hadn’t flung at Jaeyi’s face. But it was written there, in the tension in her spine, the way her hand lingered on the doorknob a second too long.

Yeri didn’t slam the door. She closed it quietly. But it sounded louder than any scream.

And despite Yeri’s outburst, Jaeyi never went. Not once. Not even by accident.

The next morning, she was already back on her rounds. Her white coat crisp, her steps measured. She answered questions, signed off orders, discussed patient outcomes with clinical ease. It was impressive, really. Admirable. Almost inhuman.

But if you look at her, like really look, you’ll see it was forced. She was too precise. Too neat. Too put-together. Like a painting of calm, framed over something screaming.

Her spine never curved, her voice never wavered but it was the kind of stillness born from pressure, not peace. Like she’d stitched herself shut, thread by thread, just to function.

She adjusted her route subtly, but intentionally. Never walked past Seulgi’s room. Never lingered near the east wing unless absolutely necessary. If she had to, she kept her eyes fixed on the floor, or the wall, or the clipboard in her hand, anywhere but the door that waited for her.

That room was a boundary she refused to cross.

Yeri watched through all it. Mad, furious, seething. It made her want to scream all over again. To shove Jaeyi into the goddamn door. To rip her pristine white coat off and say, Look at her. She’s still breathing. Still waiting. Still hoping for something you won’t even give her the decency to say out loud.

She wanted to drag Jaeyi by the arm, hell, by the hair if she had to, and push her into that room until she cracked. Until she apologized. Until she broke the same way Seulgi had, just so she could finally understand.

But she didn’t. She gives up.

Yeri marched inside Seulgi’s room. Neither Seulgi nor Kyung spoke. They only looked up. Kyung from her quiet corner chair, Seulgi from her bed, pale against the white sheets and sunlit gloom.

“She’s unbelievable,” Yeri snapped, pacing. “Fucking unbelievable.”

Kyung blinked slowly but said nothing. Yeri didn’t need prompting. She was already halfway to combusting.

“How can she stay still?” Yeri went on. “Composed. Cold. Act like nothing happened.”

Seulgi stayed silent. Her eyes followed Yeri with the dull ache of someone too tired to chase anything anymore.

“She won’t even look at your room,” Yeri went on, breathing hard. “She takes detours like a damn ghost is living here. Like you’re the thing she’s scared of.”

“Just let her be” Seulgi murmured, soft and barely audible. “She’s probably busy.”

A lie to herself. A lie that Kyung knows too well. A lie that Yeri had gone tired listening to.

“Busy?” Yeri scoffed, voice breaking. “No, she’s just a fucking coward”

 “Yeri.” Seulgi’s voice was low but sharp.

“She owes you more than this. More than her silence. More than some pathetic act like you were just a chapter she outgrew. She owes you her fucking apology, Seulgi.”

“Yeri.” Seulgi sat up slightly, the movement slow and tight with pain. Her grip clenched around the side rail. “Stop.”

But Yeri’s jaw clenched. Her voice dipped, trembling but venomous.
“Why? It’s true. She’s spineless. She’s no better than her mother. Abandoning the mess she made and acting like—”

“Jo Yeri!” The name cracked through the air, raw and loud, ripped from Seulgi’s throat. It silenced the room for half a second. The monitor beeped faster, a shrill staccato behind the tension.

Yeri stood still, breathing hard, her fists tight at her sides.

“She needed to hear it,” she said, her tone flattening into something colder. “Everything I said. She deserved it. I don’t regret any of it.”

Seulgi’s gaze snapped to her, sharp and disbelieving. “You said what?”

Yeri froze. Her chest rose and fell, suddenly unsure.

“You said what, Yeri?” Seulgi’s voice rose, brittle and furious, sharp enough to draw blood. The monitor beside her let out a longer, more urgent beep. Kyung shifted in her chair at the corner, eyes flicking toward the sound, but didn’t speak.

“What the hell did you say to her?”

Yeri swallowed. The edge in her voice was still there, but it shook now. “I told her my truth.”

Seulgi stared, not breathing.

Yeri looked away. “I said, maybe if you had died, she would’ve finally apologized.”

Time stopped.

The words hung there, ugly, irreversible. Seulgi didn’t react at first. Not visibly. Her face slackened, not with numbness, but something far more devastating. A kind of unraveling.
She blinked once. Then again. As if trying to force the words into place, trying to believe they weren’t what they sounded like. The monitor screamed once. A single, long beep that broke the stillness.

Kyung rose from her seat, alert.

But Seulgi didn’t look at her. She didn’t even flinch at the sound. Her gaze stayed locked on Yeri, wide, glassy. A child’s gaze, one that had been punished without understanding why. Like something had just been torn open in her chest and left there, exposed.

“Why would you say that to her?” Her voice came out quiet, threadbare. Too calm. The kind of calm that came before the collapse. Seulgi should’ve been offended. Should’ve been furious. But she just sounded wounded. More mad for what Jaeyi had to hear.

Yeri didn’t answer. She met Seulgi’s eyes, but all the fire had drained from hers, replaced with the same rawness she saw reflected. It wasn’t anger anymore. It was pain. And the unbearable weight of knowing she’d made it worse.

“You didn’t need to protect me like that—”

“I wasn’t protecting you!” Yeri’s voice broke mid-sentence, loud, jagged. Her fists clenched again, but now it was grief holding them tight. “I was protecting her! From what we see every day. From the wreckage she left behind. From what she did to you.”

Seulgi flinched. Actually, physically flinched. Like the words hit bone.

“Every time she walks past this room like it’s cursed,” Yeri choked out, “like you’re some ghost that’ll reach out and drag her back into the past. You’re the one who almost died. But she looks more haunted than you.”

Seulgi’s face broke then. Just slightly.

“You didn’t have to say that her. Imagine how she had to watch me die on her own hands Yeri” Seulgi gasp as she explained her part.

“You don’t get it,” Yeri said, stepping closer. “I don’t care! I wanted to see her break! I wanted her to feel some of the pain we’ve carried all this time. Is that so wrong?”

Seulgi didn’t answer.

She just looked at Yeri like she didn’t recognize her anymore. She looked down, and something in her body folded in. Not slumped, folded. Like the structure that held her up had given out. Yeri stepped forward on instinct.

“Seulgi—”

But Seulgi had already gone quiet. Her jaw locked, breath shallow. Her whole body stiffened as if to stop something from breaking loose.

It was grief. Heavy, suffocating. And it was swallowing her whole.

And then Kyung finally stepped in.

“Enough.”

One word. Calm but cold. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.

Kyung’s gaze swept between them, unreadable but steel-edged. Then she looked to Seulgi, softening. Out the three of them, Kyung was the first one to mature. The first one to let go. She’s far from the high-school sensitive Kyung.

“She’s not coming back for you,” Kyung said, steady. “Not for any of us. I thought that was clear by now.”

The words didn’t carry cruelty. Just finality.

Seulgi opened her mouth. Shut it again. Her fingers curled against the blanket like she needed something to hold on to. And then she whispered, not looking up.

“No. She just can’t. Not right now.”

There was a tremble in the space between her words. A small, desperate thread of hope she couldn’t bear to cut.

Kyung’s voice softened, but only slightly. “Seulgi,” She sighed. “That’s enough. You should go and rest for more.”

She then turned to Yeri. “Let’s go. You need to calm down too”

Nothing changed after a few weeks.

Yeri still came by, but she barely stayed longer than ten minutes. She’d sit in the chair by the window, arms crossed, eyes flicking between the floor and Seulgi’s unmoving form. They didn’t talk about the fight. Didn’t talk about Jaeyi. But the silence between them had changed—strained, distant, something cracked.

So, Kyung moved. Not because she wanted to. But because neither of them could anymore.

She found Jaeyi in the imaging room late into the night. The hospital had quieted into that eerie stillness. Jaeyi was standing in front of a backlit scan, arms crossed, face unreadable. Kyung didn’t knock. Didn’t clear her throat. Just walked in and closed the door behind her.

“Fix it,” she said.

Jaeyi didn’t flinch. Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. “There’s nothing to fix.”

Kyung stepped closer. Not enough to crowd her, but enough to be felt. Her fingers idly picked up a pen from the counter beside her. Twirled it once. Let it fall.

“Yeri and Seulgi fought,” she said, voice low but pointed.

Still, no reaction.

“She’s been quiet ever since,” Kyung continued. “Yeri. And that’s not her. You know that. She’s loud, she’s impatient, but she always held us together.”

A slow breath filled her chest. She didn’t know she’d been holding it.

“It used to be me and Seulgi clashing over everything. About you mostly. Then there’s college, and the way she live. Yeri was always the one in the middle, fixing, translating our silence into peace.”

She looked at Jaeyi now. Really looked.

“And you’re breaking that.” Finally, Jaeyi’s shoulders stiffened.

“You’re putting me in a tough position,” Kyung said. “And I don’t think I deserve to be in the middle of this. Not again.”

A pause. Still no words.

So Kyung tried again, quieter now. “Why didn’t you come back when your dad died?”

That hit its mark. Jaeyi’s jaw clenched. Her hand dropped to her side, nails digging into the fabric of her white coat. But she said nothing.

Kyung didn’t fill the silence. She let it breathe. Let it bleed.

“What else do you know?” Jaeyi asked finally, her voice so low it was barely a sound.

Kyung shook her head. “Frustratingly, that’s all.”

Another pause. Then, gently, like she was trying to pet a feral thing without scaring it off, Kyung said, “Seulgi’s doing better.”

She watched Jaeyi’s lips twitch. The way her grip tightened around the tablet in her hands.

“I know you know that. You have a way to check her chart anyway.”

A flicker of something. Guilt, maybe. Or fear. Or both.

“They’re talking discharge options,” Kyung said. “It’s months earlier than expected. She’s pushing herself. Walking when she shouldn’t. Trying not to cry when it hurts.”

Her throat tightened, but she kept going.

“No one says it, but we all know why. She wants to be ready. For you. In case you turn around.”

Jaeyi still didn’t move. But her eyes weren’t on the scan anymore. Just somewhere far.

“Jaeyi.” That name came out of Kyung like a sigh she’d been holding in for years. It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t cruel. It just was, steady, honest, worn-in

The tension between them hadn’t dulled with time. If anything, it had only aged into something quieter, more dangerous. The kind of silence that carried memories of slammed lockers, half-meant insults, late-night confessions they never spoke of again.

“If you’re so convinced you can’t come back to us,” Kyung said, voice even, “then fine. Don’t.”

She watched the words hit.

“But at least give her closure.”

Jaeyi didn’t look up. She always did this, pretended detachment like it was armor. But Kyung could see it now, the tiny tremor in her jaw, the wetness beginning to form around her lashes. That same bratty, brilliant girl from high school, the one who never lost a debate but never won against herself.

Jaeyi exhaled, barely audible. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Her voice had lost its edge. For once, there was no mask of control. Just a bare confession from someone who’d run too far and was now out of breath.

Kyung stared at her. The old rivalry flared in her chest for a second. God, she used to hate how Jaeyi always had the last word. How she always played cold and clever and unreachable. But this wasn’t that girl anymore. And Kyung was tired of pretending she was the same, too.

So, she softened, just barely. Enough to be real. “Then start anywhere”

Jaeyi stood frozen outside the door, forehead resting against the cold plaster. Her breath fogged slightly as she exhaled, slow and tight, trying to quiet the war in her chest. Her hands were shoved deep in her coat pockets, not for warmth, but to keep them from trembling.

She hadn’t gone in. She’d been standing there long enough for the hallway lights to flicker once. She hadn’t planned what to say. She knew it didn’t matter. Anything she said would fall short.

But Kyung’s voice was still ringing in her ears. So, with a breath that felt like surrender, she finally pushed open the door.

The door shut behind her with a muted click.

Jaeyi didn’t move right away. The room was dim, lit only by the monitors and the dying afternoon sun bleeding through the blinds. Her shoes didn’t dare scuff the floor. Her breath, shallow and tight in her throat, barely made a sound.

Seulgi was awake. It’s like she always knew when Jaeyi was near. Maybe by instinct. Maybe by muscle memory.

“Jaeyi?” Seulgi only said her name but Jaeyi had felt like backing out already.

Jaeyi tried to smile, but it didn’t reach anywhere close to her eyes.

“Hi,” she said quietly. Her voice cracked. The syllable nearly folded in on itself.

“You’re not dreaming,” she added, her throat tightening. “I’m really here.”

Seulgi blinked slowly, as if to prove it. “Yeah,” she murmured, voice rough from sleep and silence. “Just wanted to make sure.”

And then nothing. Just the soft beeping of the monitor, the faint hum of air conditioning, and the hollow ache of time wasted.

Jaeyi hesitated by the foot of the bed, shoulders hunched, hands still clenched in her coat. She didn’t know how to do this, but she must. So, she sat. Awkwardly. Carefully. Like someone afraid of breaking a memory.

The chair beside Seulgi's bed let out a tiny creak as she lowered herself into it. She didn’t take her coat off.

“Seulgi.” Her name again. This time quieter. Bitten back. Bitter. Like something she had no right to say, but said anyway because she couldn’t call her anything else.

There was no good way to start this, so she didn’t try to ease into it.

But Seulgi heard it like it was a comfort. Like it was home, still.

“Why?” The word was soft. So soft it might’ve been missed if Jaeyi hadn’t been listening for it. Not demanding. Not accusatory. It’s like a child asking something they weren’t old enough to understand yet.

Jaeyi almost broke. She bowed her head. Avoiding Seulgi’s gaze. She bit the inside of her cheek. Hard. Focused on the sting. Anything to keep her from falling apart.

“I wanted to start with something else. A thank you, maybe. An apology. But I can’t figure out which one feels more right,” Jaeyi said. Her fingers gripped the hem of her coat. “I don’t know what I expected walking in here.”

Seulgi let the silence stretch.

“I thought I’d have more time,” Jaeyi said eventually. “Back then. The night I left, I thought I could stall it, talk him down, find a way to stay. Or at least say goodbye properly.”

She laughed once, sharp and humorless. “I was stupid.”

Seulgi’s brow furrowed, lips parting slightly. But still, she let her speak.

“The moment he found out about us, it was over,” Jaeyi said. “He didn’t yell. Didn’t scream. Just told me to pack a bag. And by the time I realized what was happening, we were already on the plane. He didn’t let me take my phone. He didn’t even let me look back.”

The room was too quiet. The kind of quiet that wraps around your lungs and makes breathing harder.

“He used me to threaten you, didn’t he?” Seulgi asked.

Soft. Not accusing. Because she already knew the answer, had known it for years, but needed to hear it out loud to set it free.

Jaeyi nodded.

“Was it my drug addiction?” Seulgi asked again. This time her voice broke halfway through, like it cost her something to say it.

A beat. Then another.

Jaeyi’s nod was even smaller this time. Barely a twitch. But it was there.

That was all it took.

Seulgi closed her eyes. Inhaled through her nose, shaky. Exhaled slow, like it physically hurt to let the air go. Her hand crept across the space between them, tentative, slow. She didn’t grab Jaeyi’s hand. Didn’t even touch her. Just hovered above, close enough to feel the trembling warmth radiating off her skin.

“Jaeyi.”

“Mhm?” Jaeyi’s voice cracked. Shefinally lifted her gaze, worn.

Seulgi’s gaze was soft, almost unbearably so. Wounded but without blame. There was a quiet realization in those eyes.

“Then why you wouldn’t come back when it was my fault?” Seulgi aked. Her lips trembled. Her hand, still hovering above Jaeyi’s, curled into itself like she wanted to retreat.

Jaeyi looked stricken. Like the words had landed somewhere fragile inside her.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said quickly, like she had to stop Seulgi from finishing the thought. “Seulgi, I let him do what he wanted. I didn’t fight. I could’ve—maybe I should’ve tried harder. But I just let him. I let him control it. Us. Me.”

She shook her head, disgusted with herself.

“It’s like I accepted that he was right. That you were a phase. That your past made you dangerous. That I should be ashamed for even loving you.”

“Jaeyi, you were nineteen.”

“And you were too. And still, you fought for me. You walked through fire for me. You got clean for me. You did everything you could” Her voice cracked again. “And I just disappeared.”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“No. I felt like I always had.”

Silence. A heartbeat. Two.

Then Seulgi said, with a kind of softness that nearly undid her “But you’re here now.”

The air shifted. Quieter. Thicker. Jaeyi let out a long-tired exhale. She looked down at their hands, hers trembling slightly, Seulgi’s resting just over hers, still gentle, still open.

“I kept waiting,” Jaeyi said after a pause. “For some perfect moment where it would make sense to come back. After he died. After med school. After everything. But it never came.”

Seulgi’s gaze didn’t leave her. Her fingers twitched like she wanted to hold Jaeyi’s hand properly, but didn’t want to push.

“Why not?” she asked.

The question didn’t feel accusatory. It wasn’t sharp. Just honest. Just tired. She had every right to ask it, and they both knew it.

Jaeyi blinked, like the question had touched something deep inside her. Her lips parted, but it took her a moment to find the words.

“I think I forgot how to be someone you could love,” she said, voice raw. “And I couldn’t come back to the version of me that left you.”

Seulgi’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

“I didn’t know how to come back,” Jaeyi said again. “To you. To everyone else.”

Her hands were shaking now. She didn’t bother hiding it.

“Did you ever want to?”

The question hovered in the air, delicate and devastating.

Jaeyi didn’t answer right away. Her throat tightened, her mind stuttered through a thousand versions of yes and no that all sounded like lies. Her silence stretched between them, not empty, but full. Full of the years lost, the versions of herself she tried to bury.The kind of silence that feels like it should echo.

Seulgi didn’t push. She just waited.

“I don’t know,” She risked a glance at Seulgi. Just a small one.

But Seulgi wasn’t glaring. Wasn’t crying. She was watching her with that same soft, fragile hope that made everything harder.

Then there was a knock. Sharp. Sudden. Like glass cracking across the room.

Jaeyi blinked, body stiffening. She straightened instinctively, shoulders locking in place. When the door opened, she turned toward it.

Her face went pale. He walked toward them. Not fast, not slow, just that same deliberate pace he used when he was about to say something final. Something she wasn’t allowed to argue with.

Jaeyi’s vision narrowed. Her heart slammed against her ribs so fast it made her nauseous. She couldn’t breathe through it. Couldn’t speak.

A sob climbed its way up her throat. Hot, sharp, inevitable. But it caught. Like every other time he’d looked at her and expected obedience.

The weight of it crushed her chest. She wanted to move, but her body refused. Her fingers curled into fists on her knees, trying to ground herself, but even her knuckles felt numb.

Then a hand. Warm. Solid. Steady. Seulgi. Her fingers wrapped around Jaeyi’s, not tight, but certain. A quiet anchor.

“Jaeyi?” Seulgi’s voice was small, almost hesitant. But it cut through the panic like a thread of light in a locked room.

And just like that, the illusion cracked.

The air shifted. The walls didn’t seem so close. Her father wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t even looking at her. And then, in a blink, he was gone.

No footsteps. No door closing. No noise. Just absence.

Jaeyi looked around, suddenly unmoored. Like she’d just sobered up from a nightmare, sweat still cooling on her skin. Every reason she’d come here had blurred. Confusion swelled in her chest, and yet some strange, all-knowing dread stayed with her. Like the dream was real.

“I should go,” she said quickly. Her voice sounded too thin, too small. She was already pulling her hand back from Seulgi’s, already pushing herself to her feet.

Just then, a nurse entered. This time, a real one. Not a vision. Not some manifestation of guilt or fear. Clipboard in hand. A quiet nod. Something about medication or vitals or visiting hours. It didn’t matter. It was a reason. It was a way out. Jaeyi latched onto it without thinking.

She made her way to the door, steps too fast, too light. Like she was afraid the floor might fall through. And just as she touched the handle, Seulgi’s voice followed her.

“Jaeyi.”

It was the kind of voice that made you turn around even when you didn’t want to.

“You’ll visit me again, right?” She asked as if to confirm. As if to tether Jaeyi on her orbit for some more.

A pause. A breath.

Jaeyi froze for just a second. Then turned, only halfway. Her eyes never quite meeting Seulgi’s.

“I’ll call you later,” she said, and the words tasted like maybe.

Chapter Text

The call never came.

Not the day after. Not the week after. Not even on the day Seulgi was set to be discharged.

Dr. Oh Yiyoung would sometimes mention Jaeyi in passing, like a shadow brushing against conversation. “She’s still around,” she’d say casually, or, “I saw her in the surgical wing this morning.” Just enough to prove Jaeyi hadn’t disappeared. Just enough to keep Seulgi from asking.

It was relief, at first. Proof that Jaeyi hadn’t run away. That maybe she just needed space. Another time to breathe. To gather herself before speaking to Seulgi again. That thought anchored Seulgi. So, she waited. Behaved. Focused mostly on her breathing exercises. It felt like she was back in the police academy, only worse because this time, when her lungs failed her, no amount of grit could push through.

Byeongjin visited her often. He came with cheap coffee, bad jokes, and updates from the force. He told her about the recent buy-bust. One of theirs didn’t make it. A good cop, solid reputation.

“It was a clean op though,” he said. “Your intel turned the tide.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know how to feel about the promotion they offered afterward. It sat hollow in her chest, next to everything else she wasn’t ready to name.

“Oh, Seulgi,” a woman’s voice said from the door, bright and familiar. “I’m glad you’re finally getting discharged.”

Seulgi blinked. “Jena unnie?”

“In the flesh,” Jena replied with a light smile, walking in like she owned the place because technically she did.

“It’s been so long,” Seulgi murmured, standing straighter. She eyed the other woman’s tailored coat and the polished badge that read J Medical Center. Director. “Wait. You work here?”

“She’s the director,” Byeongjin offered quietly, like he knew something Seulgi didn’t.

“Ah, really?” Seulgi turned to Jena, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Don’t make it sound burdensome,” Jena laughed easily then, her voice shifted. Softer. Lower. “Jaeyi would’ve been thrilled to be here today.”

Seulgi’s brows furrowed. “Jaeyi? Why? Wasn’t she on duty?”

Silence.

Byeongjin and Jena exchanged a glance. Quiet and sharp. The kind of look people pass before saying something they’re not sure should be said. Seulgi felt the air thin.

Jena took another step into the room. Byeongjin shut the door behind her with a soft click, and moved to the couch.

Seulgi’s palms began to sweat. Something was wrong. And whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

“I personally didn’t want to drag you into this,” Jena started carefully.

“Seulgi, take a seat,” Byeongjin added, gesturing to the chair he’d pulled close to the couch. Like this was going to take time.

Seulgi dragged herself to the seat. “What’s going on?” she asked, eyes on Byeongjin. “Do you two know each other?”

“Not until recently,” Byeongjin replied. “She hired me to look into her sister. Dr. Yoo. While she was in the US.”

Seulgi’s brows furrowed. “What?”

Jena sat forward, folding her arms tightly over her chest. Her voice dropped a note lower, serious. “Jaeyi’s return, it didn’t sit right with me. One day, she showed up at my apartment. You know, a place I’ve kept off the grid since forever. I have run away from home after all”

She let the silence sit, like the weight of that memory still unsettled her.

“She handed me a folder,” Jena continued. “Said she wanted me to take over the hospital. Just like that. I was going to refuse at first, but my instinct told me I should. Or maybe it was guilt for leaving her on that damn hell home.”

Seulgi stared, heart creeping into her throat.

“Anyway, I was waiting for her to come back ever since our father died. It was the most liberating news of my life. I assumed it would be for her, too.” Her voice faltered, briefly. “But she didn’t react the way I thought she would. In fact, she got even harder to reach. As in, no reply, no calls. Her last excuse to me was that she was busy with med school.”

Jena looked at her squarely. “Which is bullshit. If I have any say on it.”

Seulgi's throat felt dry. “That’s why you hired him?” she asked, her voice thin.

Jena nodded. “I needed answers. And I knew I couldn’t get them on my own. But more than that, Seulgi,” She paused, her expression softening. “You know her better than I do. Better than anyone ever did. So I knew, if I was right to be worried, you’d feel it too.”

Seulgi didn’t speak. The pit in her stomach said enough.

She forced the words out. “What did you find?”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell this to you, Seul,” Byeongjin muttered.

Seulgi didn’t answer. Just looked at him. Waiting.

He shifted his weight on his seat, eyes flicking briefly to Jena. She gave him the smallest nod, arms still folded, her expression unreadable.

“Just give her the report,” she said quietly.

Byeongjin sighed. Still hesitant. He pulled a thin folder from inside his coat. Nothing special. Just a plain folder file. But the way he held it was like it was something radioactive.

“Promise me you won’t break,” he said.

Seulgi blinked. “This isn’t funny, Byeongjin.”

“I wish it was.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “Fuck. Here.”

He placed the folder on her lap like it might burn him if he held it any longer. Seulgi stared at it for a moment. The silence stretched. Her fingers hovered above the edge of the flap, then curled away.

“I can read it later,” 

“No,” Jena said. Firm, but not unkind. “You should know. Now.”

Seulgi swallowed hard, her heart pounding in her ears. Then she opened it.

The first thing she saw was a photo. Grainy, a little out of focus, like it had been taken in secret. Jaeyi, thinner than she remembered. Her hair longer. She was standing on the steps of a dimly lit building in what looked like a hospital gown, flanked by two unfamiliar people in white coats. Her expression, blank. Empty.

Not tired. Not distant. Gone.

Seulgi stared at the image, unblinking.

“That’s a psychiatric institution,” Byeongjin said, voice low. “She was listed under a pseudoname. It was private. Only people who have crazy amount of money can get in.”

Seulgi flipped the page. Medical charts. Notes blacked out. A date. Six years ago. Then another, five years ago. Then again. Patterns. Relapses. Emergency sedation protocols. Trauma responses.

Another page. A single line highlighted in red:

“Subject continues to show signs of severe dissociation following the incident involving her father.”

“Jaeyi, remember this moment.”

Her father’s voice was raw, trembling with rage, but it was the way he looked at her that made her blood go cold. His face was red, wet with sweat and anger, his knuckles bone-white around the grip of the pistol.

“You’re really going to throw your future away for that girl?” he spat. “For her?”

She said nothing. Her bag hung heavy at her side. Her keys, tucked in her other hand, bit into her palm. Her throat had closed hours ago.

“You think love will feed you?” he hissed. “You think that street rat will give you a life better than the one I bled for? I gave you everything. I gave you this life. That degree. That hospital. That name.”

His hand trembled.

“Appa, please,” Jaeyi finally whispered.

“Then go,” he said, quieter now. “Go back to her. But remember me. Remember this. Remember all of this.”

The shot went off.

It was instant.

The sound cracked through the room like a lightning bolt. Then silence.

The back of his skull split open. Blood sprayed across the wall. Deep red on white. His eyes rolled upward, one bulging, half-popped from its socket. The bullet had gone straight through.

He collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

Thud. Twitch. Twitch. Still.

Jaeyi didn’t scream right away. She just stood there, eyes wide, air sucked clean from her lungs. Her ears rang. Her mouth moved, but no words came. The world around her slowed to a crawl—the blood, oozing thick and lazy over the floor tiles. The smell, acrid, coppery, hot. A hint of smoke.

The gun was still in his hand.

An eyeball rolled across the floor and stopped inches from her foot. Staring at her.

Her knees hit the ground with a sick crack.

“Appa?” Her voice was a child’s.

She crawled to him, her legs refusing to cooperate, her palms slipping in warm, fresh blood. She reached for his face, for the hole in his head, as if she could just press it back together. As if he would wake up.

She picked up the eyeball. It was slippery. Soft. She cradled it in her shaking hands, tried to push it back into the broken socket with trembling fingers.

“Please, please, don’t do this. Don’t—don’t leave me.”

The blood soaked through her sleeves, her pants, staining her skin to the elbows. The smell of it coated her throat, sickening. She tried CPR. She tried pressing on his chest, even though half his brain was on the floor.

She couldn’t stop crying, but the sobs didn’t sound human. Just choked gasps and shrieks that wouldn’t shape into words.

She grabbed her phone. It slipped from her hands twice. Blood made the screen unreadable. Her fingers couldn’t press the numbers right. She hit the emergency button. Her voice cracked when the operator answered.

“He—he’s—he’s bleeding. My dad, he—he shot—he—there’s so much blood. I can’t—I don’t—please, please, send someone—”

She dropped the phone and curled beside the body.

And stayed there. Rocking. Her forehead pressed to his chest. Her fingers still clutching the eyeball like it was the only thing she had left of him.

By the time the paramedics arrived, she was catatonic. Blood-crusted. Silent. Her hands wouldn’t open.

No one spoke anything about it. Not in the psychiatric facility with velvet-lined walls, not in the white hallways of silence where nurses wore designer uniforms and pretended not to notice Jaeyi waking up screaming every night.

Jaeyi didn’t speak for the first three months. Her fingers were locked, curled tight like claws, still shaped like they were holding something that wasn’t there anymore. Her throat was always dry. The smell of blood wouldn’t leave.

They tried everything.

Therapy sessions where no words ever came. Electrodes attached to her scalp like invasive vines, measuring silence. Sedatives that turned her into a ghost in her own skin. But nothing worked.

Not until they let her scrub.

It started small. An act of compulsion. A desperate grasp for order. At night, when the halls fell quiet and the other patients slept, Jaeyi would slip into the staff laundry room. She learned which closets were left unlocked, which carts weren’t inventoried. She stole gloves, gauze, surgical soap. She found solace in bleach and antiseptics.

And she cleaned.

She scrubbed invisible blood from metal sinks, wiped down surfaces that were already sterile. She reenacted surgeries she’d never performed, speaking to phantoms, stitching together trauma with steady hands and muttered mantras.

It gave her something to do with the madness. It gave her mind something to fix when nothing else could be mended.

Months passed like that. Until one night, a nurse found her hunched over a pile of perfectly clean linens, stitching gauze like it was skin. The nurse didn’t scold her. She watched. Then she left a book behind the next day. And another the week after that.

Medical texts. Cadaver images. Case studies. It became her new sedative.

After a year, they realized she wasn’t going to die there. She wasn’t healing but she was clawing her way out.

She was enrolled in a university.

But not really.

She never showed up to classes. Never joined labs. Professors didn’t know where to send feedback because she never asked for any. She was always absent and always perfect.

When she did appear, it was for exams. Her answers were clean. Always brutally precise.

Her name rippled through the campus like a rumor.

Yoo Jaeyi, does she even exist?

She doesn’t talk to anyone.

I think I saw her once in a lab coat, left before the bell rang.

The other students thought she was arrogant. Or gifted. Or cursed. Nobody knew the truth.

She kept her head down during practicals, eyes cold, hands sharper than any scalpel. When professors tried to engage her, she offered only the bare minimum. A nod, a diagnosis, a solution.

They started calling her the prodigy. But she wasn’t a prodigy. She was a survivor.

In less 2.5 years, she got her degree.

Seulgi was shaking.

Not just her hands, her whole body. Like her insides had twisted. The folder trembled in her grip, the pages rustling with each breath she couldn’t quite catch.

Jena sat across from her, composed in posture but stiff with guilt. Her eyes were pinned to Seulgi, watching the unraveling with quiet devastation. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just held herself still, as if any wrong word would shatter the room.

Across from them, Byeongjin was now standing. Pacing, one hand gripping the back of his neck, the other hovering uselessly in the air. He kept glancing at Seulgi, panic growing in his eyes.

“Seulgi—” he started, but she bolted.

The chair flipped violently against the floor as she stood. The report hit the ground in a scatter of pages. She stumbled toward the bathroom, hand clamped over her mouth, gagging before she even reached the door.

“Seulgi!” Byeongjin rushed after her, catching her just as she collapsed to her knees by the toilet. He knelt beside her without hesitation, one hand on her back, the other brushing her hair aside as she heaved.

Each retch was guttural, raw. From grief. From horror. But she wasn’t crying. Not yet. Her body was too focused on trying to expel the unthinkable.

Back in the room, Jena silently gathered the fallen report, her fingers ghosting over the pages she’d already memorized. She laid it carefully on the table, then followed the sound of Seulgi’s vomiting.

Seulgi’s arms trembled beneath her weight. Her knuckles turned white against the rim of the toilet bowl. She was sweating through her fresh casual clothes, her breaths coming in short, sharp gasps. Wet, desperate, like her lungs had forgotten how to hold air. Her recent condition wasn’t helping too.

“I—I can’t—” she choked out between heaves, the words barely forming.

Byeongjin was kneeling beside her, frantic but steady. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Try to calm down and breathe”

But she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were blown wide, fixed on nothing, her mind still trapped in those pages. The description of the facility, Jaeyi’s hallucinations, the fucking eyeball in her hand. Her heart thundered against her ribs.

She tried to stand but stumbled again, crumpling against the cold wall. Her whole frame shook as if she’d been dropped into a snowstorm.

“How long did you know?” she rasped, her voice raw, like she was sobbing without tears, choking more on air than on emotion.

“Yesterday,” Jena answered softly, stepping closer with a pack of wet wipes and a half-filled bottle of water. Her voice was gentle, almost maternal.

Byeongjin glanced at Seulgi once more before nodding and stepping back, giving them space.

Seulgi looked up at Jena through trembling lashes. Her eyes, still glassy, softened. Jena wore the same look Seulgi had moments ago: shattered concern in quiet restraint. The kind that said I should’ve done more. I should’ve seen it.

“Drink first,” Jena murmured, uncapping the bottle.

Seulgi took it with trembling hands. The plastic crinkled under her grip, water sloshing as she raised it to her lips. She forced it down, throat tight, the liquid spilling past her chin.

When she finished, Jena crouched beside her, gently wiping the sweat and vomit from her face. She didn’t flinch, even as her fingers brushed sticky strands of hair. She kept going, wiping her clothes too, like it was the only thing she could do to hold Seulgi together.

“I wish I knew sooner.” Jena continued slowly, “Two days ago, she came to me. Said she was going home. I didn’t even hesitate. I signed off on it. She’s never home since you got here, so I thought,”

The words hung in the air, unfinished.

Seulgi’s stomach turned again. Her grip on the water bottle tightened as another wave of nausea rolled through her.

“I checked with her house staff this morning” Jena said, her voice breaking for the first time. “She’s not there. Said she never went home”

Silence pressed in on all sides. The kind that suffocates.

Seulgi looked at Jena like she didn’t understand what she was saying. Like she had to hear it again in a more a painful way

“You mean—?”

Jena met her gaze, something deep and broken flickering behind her own eyes.

“She’s gone,” she whispered. A pause. Then, softer: “Again.”

"You're lying"

Jena didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. Her silence said everything.

Seulgi suddenly stood, stumbling backward like the words had struck her physically. “No. No—she wouldn’t. Not without—” Her voice cracked, sharp and rising.

“We couldn’t contact her. Nobody could. Even when I left her a message about your discharge” Jena said gently, slowly rising too.

Seulgi doubled over again, not to vomit, but in disbelief. Her hands tangled in her hair as a low, guttural sound broke from her chest. Half sob, half scream. She tried to pace, to do something, but her body refused to obey. She was collapsing in pieces.

“She’s not okay, Jena—she’s not okay!” she shouted, tears streaking down her face. “After everything, what if she—what if she’s—”

She couldn’t even finish the thought.

“I know,” Jena said, her own eyes brimming now. “I know.”

“That’s why I’m using everything she left me—every bit of power she handed over—to find her.” Jena’s voice shook. “I already confirmed she hasn’t left the country. She’s still here. Somewhere.”

Seulgi didn’t answer. She just cried harder, like her body had finally stopped pretending it could hold anything back.

Byeongjin stepped out quietly, scanning the hallway, keeping watch in case Kyung or Yeri returned too soon. He knew this wasn’t something they were ready to see.

Jena moved closer. She was crying too now, silently, but her focus stayed on Seulgi. Gently, firmly, she reached for her shoulders.

“Seulgi,” she said softly. “I need you to hold on. I need you to help me find her.”

Seulgi lifted her gaze, slow and hollow. Their eyes met. She looked more defeated than Jena had ever seen her. Like her face was remembering something it never wanted to feel again. Like this was happening all over.

Jena took it in. Nodded, slow and certain, as if to repeat her words again. I know. I know. Like a mother hushing her child to stop from crying. “We’ll find her.”

The ride to Seulgi’s place was heavy with silence. The hum of the engine and the occasional city lights flashing through the windows were the only sounds breaking the stillness. Most of her belongings were already packed in Yeri and Kyung’s car, driving ahead on their own route. It felt like pieces of her life were being scattered, and she wasn’t sure how to catch them all.

Seulgi had insisted on riding with Byeongjin, and he hadn’t argued. He knew better than to press her, especially after what had just happened. Instead, he kept his eyes on her. Watching the subtle tremble of her hands, the way her jaw clenched tightly, the haunted look she tried to mask behind calm eyes. He didn’t say a word, but every glance was a silent question, every breath a quiet plea for her to hold on.

As the city lights passed by, a flicker of clarity hit Seulgi. A plan formed quietly in her mind. It was reckless, maybe even foolish, but it was the only hope she could grasp.

She waited until Byeongjin’s attention drifted. His phone buzzing with calls. The car slowed and finally stopped at a red light. Byeongjin’s gaze dropped to the glowing screen as he stepped out to answer. In that instant, Seulgi moved.

She slipped quietly from the passenger seat into the driver’s side, fingers trembling as she slid behind the wheel. The light still hung stubbornly red, but she didn’t wait. Her foot pressed down hard on the accelerator, the engine roaring to life.

“Seulgi, wait!” Byeongjin’s voice called after her, sharp and urgent. But she was already gone, the car lurching forward into the night. He could only hope she’d come back safe.

Her fingers clenched the steering wheel so hard her knuckles went white. It felt like the past itself was pulling her forward, dragging her toward a place that might break her completely or maybe, just maybe, hold the last thread of hope.

Home. Because if Jaeyi truly said she was going home, then there was only one place it could be.

The apartment they used to share.  

The moment the car screeched to a stop, Seulgi was out. Her lungs already burning, but she ran anyway driven by instinct, panic, desperation. Her feet pounded against the pavement, past the familiar mailboxes, up the stairs. Then, suddenly, she stopped.

Something tugged at her. A thought. She turned back and rushed to the mailboxes. Just to check.

She didn’t mind how she’s out of breath as she look for the apartment number. When she did, she took the small stack mail and read it.

Yoo Jaeyoon. It said.

Her legs moved before her brain could catch up.

She ran again, taking the stairs two at a time, heart thundering in her ears. By the time she reached the floor, she was gasping for air, chest heaving. Her limit in breathing was getting on her and it pissed her off, but she felt it. The stitch beneath her clothes. Like a reminder from Jaeyi to slow down. So, she did. She forced herself forward, each step slower, more deliberate, until she stood in front of the door.

Unchanged. Familiar. Haunting.

She stared at it longer than she should have. The last time she came here, a stranger had opened it. Blinked at her. Asked who she was. And she had stood there frozen, gutted by the thought that someone else had occupied what used to be their safe space.

She stepped forward and rang the bell.

Once.

Nothing.

Again.

Still nothing.

Her pulse quickened. Her knuckles tapped once. Then again, harder. Her voice cracked as she whispered, “Jaeyi?”

Another knock. Louder. Desperate.

“Jaeyi, I know you’re in there. Please—”

Panic surged. Her palms were damp, trembling. She was trying to hold herself together, but it was slipping. She exhaled. Tried to think.

Then she remembered.

Her hands moved before she could stop them. Shaky fingers hovering over the keypad like they weren’t her own.

240207.

Their anniversary.

She pressed it in, each number like a prayer.

Then a beep followed by a soft click.

The lock gave way.

The door creaked open. Slow.

Seulgi froze. Every hair on her body stood on end. Her breath caught halfway up her throat. Her heart wasn’t racing anymore. It had paused, like it’s bracing for what waited beyond that threshold.

Chapter Text

Seulgi stepped in like she was trespassing in a past life.

That same faint scent of coffee clung to the air. The DVD player was humming an old track looping softly, hauntingly.

Lucid Fall.

No words, just humming. As if the song had been waiting for it to be stopped

Everything was new. The sofa, the shelves, the curtains. But it was all arranged the same way. Like a grief disguised as routine.

She moved through the apartment like her legs weren’t hers. Her body buzzed with something she couldn’t name. At the DVD player, her hands trembled as she hit stop. The humming died, leaving a silence so loud it rang in her ears.

“Jaeyi?” she called, voice cracking in half.

No answer.

She turned toward the hallway and froze.

A line of light bled from beneath the bathroom door. Steam curled out, slow and ghostly.

Her stomach dropped.

She ran.

The door creaked as she shoved it open. Her heart stopped.

There, lying in the tub, was Jaeyi. Skin flushed from the heat, hair damp and plastered to her forehead, eyes closed.

Still.

Peaceful.

Too still.

Seulgi’s mind screamed. Her knees hit the floor with a dull thud as she rushed forward.

“Jaeyi!” It sounded like she forced it out from the bottom of despair.

She hesitated for only a second. Her hands moved, trembling. She brushed Jaeyi’s cheek with the back of her fingers before pressing two against her neck.

Please. Please.

A pulse.

It was there. Faint, but steady.

Seulgi nearly collapsed. The breath she released sounded like a sob strangled into a whisper.
“Jaeyi-yah,” she choked. “Wake up.”

Jaeyi stirred, head lolling faintly. Her lashes fluttered as she blinked up in confusion.

“Seulgi?” Her voice was raw, shredded from crying or screaming or not speaking at all. She blinked., slow, unsure.

But when recognition hit, her eyes filled with sorrow.

She pushed herself up with a jolt of panic, sloshing water everywhere as she reached for Seulgi, hands grabbing fistfuls of her shirt, her arms, anything she could hold.

She clung to her like a drowning person would to air. As if Seulgi had been the one that gone missing. As if Seulgi coming back had pulled her from a place too dark to name.

Seulgi wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close, not caring that she was soaked, not caring that her knees hurt or that her lungs burned from everything that is happening. All she cared about is Jaeyi.

“Hey,” Seulgi whispered, her lips against Jaeyi’s temple. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Jaeyi didn’t say anything. Just clung tighter.

Eventually, her grip loosened. She leaned back slightly to look at Seulgi, eyes glazed, her lips trembling.

She looked lost. Like someone still stuck between dream and reality.

Seulgi’s eyes welled with tears, forcing a smile.

“You shouldn’t fall asleep in hot water,” she said gently, brushing wet strands away from Jaeyi’s face. “It’s dangerous. You know that, right?”

Jaeyi frowned, pouting slightly like a confused child. “Mmm got tired”

“Yeah,” Seulgi nodded, voice catching. “Let’s cool you down first, okay?”

She helped Jaeyi adjust the water, making sure it wasn’t too cold, not too hot. Just enough to bring her back gently, not shock her. Her hands moved with a steadiness she didn’t feel, every motion precise, careful. Reverent.

Jaeyi didn’t say much. She didn’t need to. Her limbs moved slow, like her body was still deciding whether to trust the moment. She flinched a little when Seulgi reached for her again but didn’t pull away.

Seulgi wrapped her in the softest towel she could find. Carried her out with arms made stronger by panic and love. She helped her into clothes that smelled faintly like lavender, something freshly laundered, loose and warm. Jaeyi let her. Didn’t speak. Just stared somewhere far away, eyes glassy and rimmed red.

Once she was dry, dressed, and blanketed in silence, Seulgi sat her in front of the vanity mirror. She plugged in the dryer, fingers moving on autopilot, but her thoughts spun violently in place.

The hum of the dryer filled the space between them, masking the tremble in her breath. She brushed Jaeyi’s hair out in sections, slow strokes, gentle detangling. Jaeyi swayed slightly, as though the sound and warmth had lulled her halfway to sleep again.

She didn’t fight it. She didn’t say a word.

When Seulgi finally turned the dryer off, the silence was almost unbearable. She met Jaeyi’s eyes in the mirror.

A ghost.

That’s what they looked like. Two people who’d loved each other so deeply that they’d died somewhere in the middle of it.

She led her to bed next, pulled back the covers, and guided her down with an aching kind of care. Jaeyi sank into the mattress like it was the only thing left holding her together. The sheets crinkled beneath her, soft. Her eyes fluttered shut almost immediately. Then opened again.

She turned toward Seulgi.

Her lips parted.

But no words came out.

Just a breath. Just a tremble.

Like she wanted to say something. Everything. But didn’t know how and where to start.

Seulgi sat on the edge of the bed. Reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Jaeyi’s ear. Her fingers lingered there, brushing her temple lightly, like touching something holy.

Jaeyi’s lashes lowered. Her body was still trembling faintly, from heat or cold or what she'd nearly done. Seulgi didn’t know.

She just knew she was here now. And that Jaeyi hadn’t really expected her to be.

Guilt coiled hot and sharp in her throat. Sympathy churned in her gut. But something heavier sat behind all that. Something that felt like grief.

She leaned down, close enough for Jaeyi to feel her breath.

“I’m here,” she whispered. Not as a promise but as a vow, for this moment. “I’m here.”

Jaeyi’s eyes blinked slowly, unfocused. She didn’t respond. Not with words. Only her hand, weak and trembling, reached out beneath the blanket, fingers blindly seeking, brushing Seulgi’s wrist.

Seulgi threaded their fingers together.

Seulgi woke to the persistent buzz of her phone vibrating against the floor.

Her neck ached. Her back throbbed. She'd fallen asleep sitting upright, half-curled at the edge of the bed, her head bowed, one arm still resting across Jaeyi’s legs as if touch alone could hold her there. Could keep her from slipping away.

The room was dim, washed in the soft, eerie orange of distant city lights bleeding through the curtains. It was already past midnight.

Her body hurt from the position, but that wasn’t what made her chest ache.

Jaeyi hadn’t moved.

She was still lying there, on her side, one arm tucked close to her chest. Her skin looked too pale in the faint light, lips slightly parted, breaths shallow and slow. So still, it frightened Seulgi.

Seulgi blinked the fog from her eyes and forced herself to breathe. She reached for her phone on the floor. The screen lit up instantly. Dozens of missed calls and unread messages from Yeri and Kyung. She didn’t open any of them instead she turned it off.

She needed this silence with Jaeyi.

Her mouth felt dry, tongue thick and heavy against the roof of her mouth. Slowly, she rose and stepped out of the room, her bare feet brushing the cold floor. Her hands were cold too. Colder than they should be.

The kitchen was quiet. Still. There were no dishes in the sink, no kettle on the stove.

Just silence.

She opened the fridge and paused.

Rows of bottled water lined the shelves. Neat, uniform, untouched. No takeout containers. No fruits. Not even condiments. Just water. That was it.

Seulgi closed the fridge slowly, her brow furrowing.

She moved back toward the bedroom, her steps slower now. Her eyes scanned the space instinctively. Was it always this big back then? She wasn’t sure.

Then she saw it.

The pill bottles.

They were lined up perfectly on the bedside table. Labels all facing forward, caps screwed on tight. She stepped closer.

Six bottles. Maybe seven.

She recognized some of the names. Sleep aids. Antidepressants. One was an anti-anxiety medication. But the rest, the rest were unfamiliar. And there were too many of them.

A cold knot formed in her stomach.

She reached out, touched one bottle then pulled her hand back like it burned.

She could’ve picked up her phone. Searched them. Typed each one in to see what they were. She could’ve tried.

But she didn’t.

Because part of her already knew. And she wasn’t sure if she could survive knowing for certain. So, she turned away.

But the dread didn’t leave. It clung to her like static, buzzing under her skin.

She looked toward Jaeyi again. Still asleep, still too still. Her brows were faintly pinched now, like even in sleep something inside her ached.

Seulgi swallowed the lump forming in her throat and moved slowly through the room, her hands brushing over furniture, drawers, shelves. Everything was clean. Everything was organized.

There was no clutter. No laundry. No loose papers. Nothing out of place. Like someone had taken the time to wrap things up.

She paused at the bookshelf.

Notebooks lined the bottom shelf, stacked perfectly. Some spines worn, others new. Seulgi recognized the thick covers, the way Jaeyi used to color-code her sections with tabs and washi tape.

Clinical notes. Patient logs. Personal reflections. Medical scribbles only Jaeyi could understand.

She reached out and pulled one.

The smell of paper and ink hit her. The same scent she used to associate with Jaeyi’s long nights at the study desk, mumbling to herself, highlighter between her teeth. She opened the notebook slowly.

Tiny, neat handwriting filled the pages. Margin to margin. A whole world of information obsessively documented. Circles, arrows, footnotes. It was brilliant. It was Jaeyi.

Seulgi’s lips curved faintly. Despite everything, pride bloomed beneath the unease.

She reached for another notebook. As she pulled it out, something slipped free and floated gently to the floor, a delicate blue paper crane, folded with surgical precision.

Seulgi blinked. She bent down and picked it up.

The paper felt heavier than it looked. The creases were too sharp, too stiff. It wasn’t just a decoration. She turned it over in her palm and saw faint ink scratched along one wing.

01.01.2031

A date.

Her fingers paused. Her eyes narrowed. And then she felt them. Raised bumps beneath the folds. The texture of handwriting pressed into the paper. A message.

Her stomach dropped.

She unfolded the crane slowly, each crease peeling back like layers of dread.

“To Seulgi—"

She crumpled it before she could even read further.

Her hand shook as she gripped it in her fist, nails digging into her palm. Her breath hitched, and her body trembled with the effort to stay still, to not scream.

She didn’t want to know. She already knew.

And still, her gaze fell to the notebook the crane had fallen from.

With a mix of fear and urgency, she opened it.

At first, more of the same notes, case studies, Jaeyi’s  detailed annotations was there. But then, tucked between pages, she saw another crane.

Blue.

Then yellow.

Then another blue.

She flipped faster now, panic clawing at her chest. One after another, they spilled out. Wedged between dated entries, carefully hidden like secrets she hadn’t meant to leave out in the open. Like she hoped someone would find them, but only after.

Each crane was folded tight, painfully deliberate. Blue. Yellow. Blue. Yellow.

Each had a date. Faintly scribbled, barely visible unless you were looking for it. Each is dated for the future.

She dropped the notebook. Her knees nearly gave out.

Seulgi stared at the mess of paper cranes now scattered on the floor, and the weight of them hit her like a tidal wave. Her heart pounded, her throat constricted.

She reached for one. Then another. Frantically, she began unfolding them, eyes scanning for answers, for anything.

Some were blank.

Some started the same: To Seulgi—

And others were full of things Jaeyi had never said aloud.

Behind her, Jaeyi’s phone buzzed.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

But she didn’t stir.

That in itself was alarming. Jaeyi was a light sleeper. Always had been. The kind of person who woke up from the faintest sound. Rain tapping on glass, a door creaking slightly ajar, even Seulgi’s shifting weight on the mattress.

Seulgi turned slowly, eyes fixed on the phone as it buzzed again against the nightstand. The screen lit up with soft white glow, casting long shadows on the pale bedsheet.

She hesitated, before reaching out. Her fingers hovered. She told herself it was just curiosity. But her hands were trembling. Her gut knew before her mind caught up.

With a shaky swipe, she unlocked it.

“Trip to Maldives: 24 hours until departure.”

Her vision tunneled.

Maldives.

That was where Jaeyi had learned to dive. She’d mentioned it once, back in high school, dreamy. “We should go there someday,” she’d said. “Live there, even. Stay until our hair turns grey. Until one of us isn’t here anymore.”

It had sounded romantic then. A future promised in soft sand and saltwater.

Now it read like a farewell.

Before Seulgi could fully process it, another notification slid across the screen.

“Assistant Jo Ara: I’ve sent the final draft of your will of testament. Still, I refuse to stand as your witness. I’m sorry.”

Seulgi’s stomach dropped.

Her fingers flew over the screen, tapping the message thread, eyes scanning. Looking for something. The she found it. A scanned file. A pdf. A legal draft. She opened it, hardly breathing.

The words blurred, then sharpened.

Half of Jaeyi’s assets were to be transferred to Jena.

Everything else was marked for donation. To the orphanage Seulgi grew up in.

A choked noise escaped her. It didn’t feel like her own voice.

She couldn’t move at first. Couldn’t think.

A will.

A goddamn will.

Seulgi stumbled back, her heel catching the edge of the rug. Her body lurched, hand flying out blindly to brace herself, but she hit something.

Or someone.

The jolt made her suck in a sharp breath, every nerve flaring.

Jaeyi.

She was standing behind her.

Pale. Silent. Still.

Seulgi gasped in horror, guilt surging so violently it nearly knocked her to her knees. Her heart raced, her mouth opened, ready to explain that she wasn’t trying to snoop nor didn’t mean to see that.

But Jaeyi didn’t say a word.

Her eyes were blank. Distant. Fogged over like glass left out in the rain. She didn’t even blink as she turned away.

She just walked. As if Seulgi wasn’t even there.

Seulgi froze, her chest clenching with something between dread and disbelief. She watched Jaeyi walked out of the room.

Without thinking more, Seulgi snapped out of her paralysis and followed, nearly stumbling in her haste. “Jaeyi—” she called, but her voice barely left her lips.

Jaeyi’s gait was too fluid, too slow, like muscle memory guiding her instead of thought.

She was sleepwalking.

 And she was heading straight to the living room. To where the DVD player sit.

Without looking, Jaeyi pressed a button.

The music came back to life. Soft, hollow notes curling into the space like a ghost exhaling.

Lucid Fall.

Seulgi’s spine went rigid.

It was the same track earlier. Same track that Jaeyi and Seulgi used to listen and sing to back then. The same track that now played like it was waiting, aching, for someone to sing along again.

But Jaeyi stood there, unmoving. Still in her thin sleepwear, her arms slack at her sides. Her bare feet pressed flat against the cool floorboards. The pale, eerie glow from the player cast her face in ghostly blue, carving shadows into her features.

She looked like a memory.

Seulgi’s breath trembled in her chest.

She waited for Jaeyi to move, to speak, to blink, but she didn’t. She just stood. As if her body remembered what her mind had abandoned. As if she had played this song a hundred times before, preparing for something only she understood.

She stood so long that Seulgi almost forgot to breathe.

And then, as if her strings had been cut, Jaeyi’s body swayed forward.

Seulgi caught her just in time.

“Jaeyi!” she gasped, arms wrapping around her instinctively, anchoring her to the moment, to reality. Her body was warm but limp, her weight folding into Seulgi’s chest like surrender.

Seulgi adjusted the blankets over Jaeyi’s body, her hands trembling despite the softness of her touch. Her heart hadn’t settled. It was still beating like a war drum in her chest, loud and panicked, afraid that if she blinked too long, Jaeyi might vanish again.

She sat beside her, unmoving, barely breathing, one hand resting over Jaeyi’s arm. She stroked slowly. Up, down, in a rhythm so gentle it felt like a prayer. Her thumb traced the curve of Jaeyi’s wrist, memorizing the fragile warmth of her skin. As if anchoring her to the present. As if begging her to stay.

The minutes dragged, each one stretching unbearably, suspended in silence thick enough to drown in.

“Seulgi-yah.”

It was barely a whisper. Dry. Cracked. Fragile.

Seulgi snapped to attention, spine straightening, breath catching. “I’m here,” she whispered instantly, voice already tight with emotion. She leaned in, close enough to feel the tremor in Jaeyi’s breath.

Jaeyi’s eyes fluttered open, only halfway. Glazed. Like she was caught between dreams and memories and something far worse. But she found Seulgi, barely. Her lips parted again.

“I feel cold.”

The words sliced clean through Seulgi. Not just from the sound of them, but the weight. The honesty. The helplessness behind them.

Seulgi's breath hitched. She took Jaeyi’s hand in both of hers, brought it to her chest, cradled it like it was sacred.

“You’re okay now,” she murmured, her voice barely holding. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

She rubbed soft circles into Jaeyi’s knuckles with her thumbs, her touch urgent, tender. Like she could transfer her warmth.

A long silence followed. Not heavy, but aching. Jaeyi’s eyes slipped closed again.

Jaeyi stirred hours later, the gray light of dawn beginning to seep in from the window. Seulgi hadn’t slept. Her eyes were raw, body stiff from sitting upright at the edge of the bed all night.

She didn’t say anything when Jaeyi blinked awake.

Didn’t ask about the will.

Didn’t mention the Maldives.

Didn’t bring up the paper cranes or the ghostlike way she’d moved.

She only asked, softly, like the answer might break her.

“Jaeyi,” a pause, barely a breath, “do you really have to go?”

The silence that followed was long enough to feel like grief.

Jaeyi didn’t answer. Her face remained still. Expressionless. Seulgi feared she wouldn’t respond at all.

Then, a single tear slipped down Jaeyi’s cheek. Just one.

And that was enough.

Because Jaeyi never cried in front her. Not to anybody else. Seulgi heard she did when she had to bring her back five times but experiencing it upfront was life shattering.

She reached for her without hesitation, arms wrapping around her like instinct, like a silent plea to the universe that this should not be real.

And Jaeyi let her.

She folded into Seulgi’s embrace. Her forehead pressed into Seulgi’s collarbone, the spot where her heartbeat was loudest, most alive. Her hands, small, cold, trembling, curled weakly into the fabric of Seulgi’s.

“I never wanted to leave,” Jaeyi whispered. “I tried, Seulgi. I tried everything.”

Her voice trembled with exhaustion, like she’d repeated this confession to herself a thousand times before, behind locked doors, in dark hallways, into the silence of cold pillows and the bathtub’s edge.

And now it was finally escaping, spoken not for the sake of being heard but because she didn’t have the strength to hold it in anymore.

“I couldn’t shake him out of me” Her shoulders tensed, the tremor in her bones betraying the calm of her voice. “Even now, he’s here. Watching us. Every time I close my eyes, I hear him.” Her breath hitched, turning sharp and wet in her throat.

“It only stops when I’m underwater. Only then, it’s quiet.” A beat. Then another.

“Only then, I can finally breathe.”

She drew a breath, ragged and small, like her lungs had forgotten how to hold life. And then: “I’m sorry.”

Two words.

Two words that carried the weight of every goodbye she couldn’t say properly, every night she curled into herself and begged for it to stop, every moment she pretended to be fine so no one else would have to carry it.

Seulgi closed her eyes. Tight.

Held her tighter.

Her own hands were trembling now, gripping Jaeyi’s back with a desperation that bordered on prayer. She pressed her lips to the side of Jaeyi’s head, soft, reverent, like she could whisper forgiveness straight into her skin.

“I know,” she murmured, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. “I know.”

Because it’s true. She did. She understood.

More than anyone else. Maybe even more than Jaeyi.

She had spent years saving people from that same edge, coaxing strangers off ledges with gentle voices and trembling breath, pulling soaked bodies out of bathtubs slick with resignation, talking down runaways with slurred words and pupils blown wide from the overdose. She’d held hands in the back of ambulances, whispered assurances in holding cells, listened to grief pour out like floodwater in emergency rooms and cold morgues.

She had memorized what it looked like when a person had already said goodbye in their heart. She knew what the dark could do.

But she had never imagined it would find Jaeyi. Never imagined that this time, she couldn’t help the person she love the most

Her arms tightened around Jaeyi like she could hold her together by sheer force of will. Like if she just didn’t let go, Jaeyi would change her mind. Would stay. Would try again.

But she felt it. In the way Jaeyi’s fingers barely curled. In the way her body leaned into the embrace, not for warmth but for one final moment of stillness before the storm swallowed her whole.

“Will you be happy after then?” Seulgi whispered. Her voice cracked on the last word.

For a second, Jaeyi didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Her breathing was even, too even, like she was somewhere else entirely.

And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

Seulgi’s heart caved in on itself.

A nod. Just one. But it hit like a scream.

Because Jaeyi, who never lied to her, not when they were lovers, not even during the silence that broke them, had just confessed something deeper than despair. Something irreversible.

That she believed she could only be free if she disappeared.

That peace didn’t exist here with Seulgi but somewhere else.

And Seulgi felt it all break inside her.

The years, the memories, the mornings they swore they'd grow old together. Every version of the future she'd ever imagined with Jaeyi splintered into pieces that cut her from the inside out.

She exhaled, shakily, forehead dropping gently against Jaeyi’s temple like a white flag. Her lips parted, breath hitching. She wanted to scream. To plead. Don’t go. Stay. Please. Let me try. With you. She wanted to drag her back into the light, like she had done for so many others.

But all she could say was “Okay,” she breathed.

The word nearly choked her.

She pulled back just enough to meet Jaeyi’s eyes those familiar eyes now dimmed by months, maybe years, of quiet suffering.

“I’ll help you pack”