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What can Kang Pio really do in this world? In a place where he was never truly accepted, not even by the person he had given his heart to completely. For almost nine years, he had waited for news about Jongyo from the people he had ordered to search for him, sacrificing his feelings, money, time, and even his own sanity. Kang Pio had done everything.
He was still foolishly hoping for the embrace he had been waiting for for nine years, even though in the end, perhaps all that waiting had never meant anything at all. Jongyo, who had now become a great maestro known to the world as Luca, was not the person Pio used to know. Not the Jongyo from before.
Not the boy who had once sat beside him and made the world feel a little lighter for him.
Long before all this damnable mess happened to him. Long before that damnable fate dragged them toward something neither of them had ever imagined, Kang Pio admitted that his heart had already been taken long before he even realized it himself. Perhaps that was why he had never truly been able to hate Jongyo.
He knew Jongyo had always made the feelings of someone discarded like him, someone who had never been wanted, become a little calmer through the extraordinary friendship they had shared in the past. Back when they were still in school, when everything seemed light and easy for someone like him who was a prisoner. A slave who had never truly been free from the shadow of a family that always weighed heavily on his shoulders and back. From the extreme expectations his mother had placed on a talent that, according to Pio himself, was not even that great. From the tiny bit of recognition he desperately begged from someone he acknowledged as his grandfather.
Just a little.
He had never asked for much.
He only wanted, just once, for someone to tell him that he was enough.
That his piano playing was enough.
That he was enough.
That he did not have to keep proving that he deserved to be where he was. But even such a simple request felt too expensive for anyone to give him.
And then Jongyo came.
Making Pio forget for a while that his life was something he had to keep fighting for.
Making him forget that every mistake would always be recorded, that he had never truly had the freedom to choose whom he wanted to love, whom he wanted to wait for, or even whom he wanted to miss.
Perhaps that was why nine years felt like such a long time to Pio.
Nine years of waiting for someone who might not even remember him anymore, collecting little pieces of news about Jongyo from other people's mouths, imagining what it would feel like if one day that door opened and Jongyo truly stood there.
Nine years of imagining one embrace.
Pio had not even asked Jongyo to stay.
He only wanted, just once, to be embraced by the person he had never managed to forget all this time.
How funny.
How pathetic it was that someone could become conceited simply because he was still hoping for something that had long ago stopped hoping for him to return.
Sometimes Kang Pio desperately wanted to fly freely like a bird out there in the sky, without caring about all the falsehoods he had achieved now.
To fly as far away as possible.
To enjoy the way the morning breeze caressed every feather of the wings he spread.
To pass through the clouds, feeling their gentle impact as they comfortably touched both wings he was flying with.
There was no one.
Only himself.
For the first time in his life, only himself.
Maybe if he really had wings, he would never come back.
Maybe he would keep flying until the world beneath him became too small to recognize.
Until home no longer looked like home.
Until everyone who had ever made him feel like he was not enough became nothing more than tiny dots slowly disappearing beneath the clouds.
And maybe, for the first time, Kang Pio would understand what it felt like to live without having to wait for someone to tell him that he deserved to live.
“Even after I die, you still won’t be able to defeat me.”
The sentence still remained in his head, like an echo that never truly died. All he remembered were those black eyes that had once looked at him warmly, now looking at him with hatred and anger that even Kang Pio did not know why were directed at him.
“Kang Pio, play harder! I told you, obey what I order you to do.”
Another voice followed. Spinning around in his head like broken music that kept stopping at the same place. His head was dizzy, his hand gripping the edge of the white bridge where the railway tracks ran beside it, the wind swaying and shaking his footing on the white iron edge supporting the bridge.
“If there is one thing your grandfather said that was true, it is how useless you are.”
Pio had heard that sentence before, often even from his own grandfather, but hearing it directly from Jongyo, the person he trusted with his entire soul, was different. The humming of the train passing along the tracks beside the river made the voices in his head linger faintly, bringing him back to the reality of the present. The splashing sound of the wheels mixed with the rumbling of the moving iron wheels.
His footing on the last piece of iron felt unsteady.
His body lost its balance for a moment, but Pio did not immediately realize it. His eyes were only fixed upward, on the birds perched on the cables and occasionally flapping their wings freely.
They looked so light.
So free.
As if there was not a single thing in the world capable of holding them back.
The blue sky before him seemed to be getting closer. Pio slowly raised his hand, reaching toward the clouds hanging above, as if with a little more effort, he could truly reach them.
He only wanted to catch one cloud, to feel the freedom he had only ever been able to imagine. But his footing shifted again, this time farther.
His body lost its support to turn back.
His hand was still stretched toward the sky when his body finally became free from the place where he had been standing.
For a moment, everything felt so quiet and peaceful, with only the sound of wings flapping and the blue sky slowly moving farther away from his field of vision.
Until the cold impact of the water struck his body and erased every image of the freedom he had just gained. His ears were forcibly filled with water, the world around him slowly becoming blurred.
The sounds disappeared one by one.
The sky, the birds, the cables, even the cloud he had wanted to reach slowly became shadows he could no longer recognize. Everything was blurred, just like his life.
And among his increasingly blurred vision, only one white spot from the cloud he had wanted to reach remained.
Then that spot slowly began to fade and disappear, carrying his vision into darkness as the oxygen filling his lungs ran out.
LUCA DOMICA PENTHOUSE / JONGYO
Jongyo gently tapped his whisky glass, signaling to the servant standing not far from him to refill it. One of them turned toward the liquor cabinet, took a full bottle of expensive liquor from the glass shelf, and slowly poured it into Jongyo’s now-empty glass. Jongyo only watched the golden liquid fill his glass before lifting it and downing the entire contents in one gulp. His throat felt hot, but he showed no reaction. He simply placed the glass back on the table and leaned his body against the sofa, letting his head rest against the soft back of it.
It felt strange to think that a life like this had once been something he had not even dared to imagine. A penthouse this large, servants always standing by waiting for orders, expensive clothes, cars parked down below, and people who now came to him simply to ask him to teach them music. Back then, all that luxury was something Jongyo could only see on television screens, something that had felt so far removed from the life he had once lived. Now everything surrounded him, so close that sometimes even he forgot how he had managed to get here.
When did it all begin?
Was it from their first meeting at a big event when they were still young? Back when Jongyo still believed that music was something that could give him freedom, something that could take him out of a life that felt so heavy? When his mother was still by his side and the piano was still something simple, something he could play without having to think about the past, the future, or whom he was supposed to hate? Or was it from when Kang Pio entered his life and slowly became one of the few people Jongyo trusted after his mother’s death?
Jongyo did not know.
Too many things had happened since then.
There were years that had simply disappeared from his memory. There was a foreign country whose language he did not even understand, streets he walked without knowing where he was going, and a life he was forced to live with nothing but fragments of memories remaining in his head. There were people who later helped him, teaching him many things again, until eventually Jongyo was able to stand on his own two feet and become someone he had never imagined he would become.
Yet among everything he had managed to rebuild, one thing had never truly disappeared.
The grudge was still there.
The anger was still there too.
Even after tonight, after finally saying everything he had wanted to say to Kang Pio for all those years in a voice that no longer tried to hold anything back, the feelings that surfaced inside him turned out to be nothing like what he had imagined. He did not feel relieved.
Nor did he feel victorious. There was no satisfaction from finally returning all the pain he had once received.
There was only exhaustion.
An exhaustion so deep that even Jongyo did not know whether what he was feeling was still anger or merely the remnants of something he had carried for far too long.
He looked at the small glass on the table again. There was still a little whisky left inside. The reflection of the room's lights trembled on the surface of the liquid when Jongyo slowly moved his hand.
He tried to think.
About anything.
About tonight, about Kang Pio, about what would happen tomorrow, or even about his own life after all this. But there was not a single thought he could hold onto. Every time something appeared in his mind, everything felt too heavy to continue. He only stared blankly ahead, as though waiting for his own mind to give him an answer to something he could not even put into words.
Maybe his body was already too tired to keep thinking about everything.
Maybe the alcohol beginning to fill his head was making everything feel distant and blurred.
Or maybe for the past nine years, he had become too accustomed to enduring things that when he finally had the chance to stop for a moment, he simply did not know what to do.
Jongyo slowly exhaled.
“Get out.”
The servants who had been waiting in the room immediately moved.
“That’s enough. I want to be alone.”
No one dared to ask. They only lowered their heads before leaving the penthouse one by one. After the door closed, the large room became much quieter. Jongyo remained sitting where he was, staring at the glass he had not touched again. His eyes felt heavy and his head was becoming increasingly dizzy, but he did not have the energy to stand and go to his bedroom.
In the end, he simply let his body sink deeper into the sofa. His eyelids slowly closed, and without truly realizing it, Jongyo fell asleep there.
Morning came while Jongyo was still not fully conscious. His head felt heavy and throbbed, his throat was dry, while sleep still clung heavily to his eyes. He even needed several seconds just to realize that he was still asleep on the sofa in the penthouse’s living room, with a blanket that had somehow been left on the floor and the whisky glass he had drunk from the night before still sitting on the table.
The vibration of his phone could be heard again.
Jongyo groaned softly before lazily reaching for it. His phone screen was already filled with notifications that had come in since morning. Several missed calls, messages from people who worked with him, and several messages from his manager sent one after another. One of them contained a news link with a short message asking Jongyo to read it immediately.
With eyes that were still heavy, Jongyo opened the link.
The news page appeared on the screen.
He did not pay much attention to it at first. His eyes were still half-closed as he read the large headline displayed at the very top. It was news about a famous pianist who had been found dead after an incident at one of the city’s bridges in the early hours of the morning.
Jongyo blinked.
He read the headline again, not because he was interested, but because his mind was not fully functioning yet.
A famous pianist had been found dead.
He scrolled the screen down slightly.
The first paragraph explained that the police had received a report from a resident around two in the morning after seeing the body of a man caught among one of the large rocks not far from the bridge. Officers then went to the location and found a man who was pronounced dead at the scene in what was suspected to be a suicide.
Jongyo was still reading it with an empty gaze.
Nothing made him stop.
At least not until his eyes reached the next sentence.
There, for the first time, the victim’s identity was mentioned.
Jongyo stopped reading.
His eyes became fixed on a single name printed on the screen.
**Kang Pio.**
For several seconds, nothing happened. Jongyo only stared at the words. Then his brows slowly furrowed. He scrolled the screen slightly upward, read the previous sentence, then returned to the name as if making sure he had not read it wrong.
Kang Pio.
His chest suddenly felt empty.
Jongyo, who had still been lazily leaning against the sofa, slowly sat upright. The drowsiness that had made his eyelids heavy until then disappeared just like that, as if someone had suddenly splashed cold water across his face.
The hand holding his phone began to tremble.
He read the name again.
Still the same.
**Kang Pio.**
“...”
Jongyo’s lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
His eyes moved quickly through the next paragraph. He read that the victim had been found in the morning after a resident’s report was received, that the police were still conducting an investigation at the scene, and that the victim’s identity had been confirmed.
But Jongyo was no longer truly capable of processing the sentences that followed.
Jongyo simply sat there, his face slowly losing its color, while his thoughts seemed to remain several steps behind what he had just read. His hand suddenly felt cold. The fingers holding his phone began to tremble so violently that the screen moved in front of him. Jongyo blinked several times, as if he had just woken from a sleep that was too deep and hoped the words would change when he looked at them again.
They did not change.
His breathing suddenly became short.
The chest that had previously only felt heavy from being drunk now moved up and down more quickly. He tried to take a deep breath, but it only became more difficult. His fingers gripped the phone tighter, as though the object were the only thing that could convince him that what he was reading was actually real.
Kang Pio was dead.
The sentence should have been easy to understand.
Yet his brain seemed to refuse to accept its meaning.
Jongyo slowly lowered the phone.
His gaze was empty.
He sat there without moving for long enough that eventually his own body seemed to decide to stand before his mind had time to follow. He grabbed the suit lying on the chair, put it on without paying attention to the buttons, and then walked quickly toward the elevator.
Several servants who had just arrived to prepare his morning schedule were immediately startled to see Jongyo leaving in such a state. There were even several guests already waiting because they had appointments to study music with him that morning, but Jongyo said nothing to anyone. He did not hear their questions. He did not see the faces turning toward him.
He simply kept walking.
As soon as he reached the parking area, his hands were still trembling as he tried to insert the car key.
Several times it would not go in. Jongyo tried again.
His hands were too unsteady.
“Ah...”
“Damn it!”
He took a breath and tried for the third time until the key finally went in. The car engine started, and a few seconds later, he had already left the penthouse.
He did not really know what he intended to do. He had to go to the hospital, to the place where Kang Pio’s body had been taken.
But when he arrived at the hospital, Jongyo only then realized how bad his decision to come there without thinking had been.
The area in front of the hospital was already filled with reporters. Dozens of cameras were pointed toward the entrance, and several reporters even filled the sidewalks and roads around the hospital. The death of a famous pianist was, of course, major news, especially since the news had only spread that morning.
Jongyo got out of the car in hurried steps. His head still felt heavy and his vision was slightly blurred, but he paid no attention to it at all. Ever since reading the news, his thoughts had been focused on only one place, the hospital mentioned in the report. He had not even had time to consider the possibility that his arrival would attract so much attention, especially with his status as a maestro whose name was well known in the world of music.
Before he even reached the entrance, several reporters stationed around the hospital began to recognize him. His presence immediately drew attention, causing several cameras that had previously been pointed at the hospital entrance to turn toward him. Calls began ringing out one after another, followed by questions thrown at him from every direction. Jongyo gave no response. He continued walking through the crowd, occasionally trying to avoid the cameras and people who were beginning to approach and block his path. The harder he tried to reach the entrance, the tighter the crowd surrounding him became. Several reporters even began asking about his relationship with Kang Pio, but Jongyo acted as though he could not hear a single one of them. His gaze remained fixed on the hospital building in front of him, while both of his hands, which had been trembling since earlier, became increasingly difficult to control.
“Jongyo, stop!”
A hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder from behind, pulling him away before he could truly become trapped by the crowd. Jongyo briefly turned with a dazed look, finding Lee Myeong-ro standing beside him with an expression showing both irritation and concern. Without giving Jongyo a chance to argue, Myeong-ro immediately led him back toward the car parked not far away. He opened the passenger door and told Jongyo to get in, while several reporters were still trying to follow them with cameras that continued recording. Once both of them were inside the car, Myeong-ro immediately started the engine and left the hospital area before the crowd became even more difficult to control.
“Why did you come there?” he asked after the car had driven far enough from the hospital.
Jongyo did not answer. He only sat with his body slightly hunched, staring at the road ahead without really paying attention to the vehicles they passed. Both of his hands remained on his thighs, occasionally clenching and relaxing in small movements that were difficult to control. Myeong-ro glanced at him briefly, then returned his attention to the road before continuing.
“You know what things were like there. There were so many reporters waiting for information about Kang Pio’s death, and you just went there without thinking about what might happen. You’re a famous maestro, Jongyo. Of course your presence there would raise a lot of questions, especially if they found out about your relationship with the person who had just died. You should have been more careful.”
Myeong-ro exhaled deeply when he received no response from his friend. He actually did not know what to do with Jongyo, who had looked so different from usual since earlier. He had seen Jongyo angry, losing his temper, even being in such a terrible state when his past returned to disturb his life. But seeing Jongyo trembling and losing the ability to respond to a simple conversation like this was something he had never truly understood.
“Let’s just go home. You shouldn’t be there in a state like this,” he continued in a calmer tone. “I know what Kang Pio did to you. I know how you had to live for nine years in a foreign country with parts of your memory missing, without knowing who you really were or how to return to the life you once had. You went through so much to get where you are now. And the person who was one of the reasons for all that suffering is finally gone.”
Myeong-ro fell silent for a moment, as if trying to understand what he himself was trying to say. “Haven’t you wanted to be free from everything connected to him all this time? I’m not saying that what happened to you can simply be forgotten, but at least now you don’t have to deal with him anymore. So I really don’t understand why you’re like this.”
Jongyo remained silent, while Myeong-ro’s voice slowly became something distant in his ears. He could hear every word that came out of his friend’s mouth, but not a single one was enough to make him respond. His gaze shifted toward the window, following the buildings and vehicles moving past them. The city looked just as busy as usual.
People were beginning to fill the sidewalks, several shops were opening their doors, and vehicles stopped and started moving again according to the changing traffic lights. Nothing looked different from any other morning. Everything continued as it should, as though nothing had happened that required anyone to stop for even a moment from their busy lives.
Yet Jongyo had just learned that Kang Pio was dead.
The news still felt so far removed from the reality he was facing. Even after seeing his name written in the news, after going to the hospital and witnessing so many reporters gathered there, Jongyo was still unable to fully understand what had actually happened. He did not know what he had expected when he decided to go to the hospital that morning. There had been no plan in his mind. He had not even had time to think about what he would do if he actually managed to enter the building. He had simply hurried to take his car keys and leave, as though there were something he needed to reach immediately without needing to know why.
Now, when he was already far from the hospital, Jongyo felt nothing that could explain what he had done earlier. He did not feel the relief he might have imagined he would feel if Kang Pio were no longer part of his life. The anger that had been a part of him for so many years seemed to have lost its direction. He did not feel like getting angry, nor did he feel satisfaction or happiness over the death of the person he had hated so deeply all this time. Even the sadness that should perhaps have appeared when learning that someone had died was not something he could truly feel.
There was only an emptiness that was difficult to explain.
Jongyo lowered his head, looking at his fingers, which had now begun to stop trembling. There was a heaviness left in his chest, making him occasionally take deeper breaths, but he did not know where the feeling came from. He tried to remember everything that had happened since he woke up that morning, how he read the news, how he hurried to the hospital, and how Myeong-ro pulled him away from the crowd of reporters. Everything felt like a series of events that had happened so quickly, while he himself seemed only to follow each event without truly realizing what he was doing.
Beside him, Myeong-ro was still talking about the reporters, about the possible news coverage that would appear after what had happened, and about how important it was for Jongyo to take care of himself. But the longer it went on, the harder his voice became to distinguish from the sound of the vehicles filling the streets. Jongyo only blinked occasionally, continuing to stare ahead with an expression that barely changed. There was a desire to say something, perhaps to answer Myeong-ro’s questions or simply ask his friend to stop talking for a while. However, even putting together a single simple sentence felt like it required more energy than Jongyo had.
His eyes began to feel hot. He lowered his head further, trying to ignore the sensation slowly appearing around his eyelids. For a moment, he thought he was going to cry, but no tears fell. There was only a strange feeling that made his throat tighten and his chest grow heavier. Jongyo did not know whether he was grieving, shocked, or simply unable to accept what had just happened. He was not even sure whether he had the right to feel the loss of someone he had hated so fiercely, especially after all the things he had said to that person only a few hours earlier.
The thought did not develop into regret or a desire to repeat what had happened the night before. Jongyo simply did not know where he was supposed to place himself in this situation. He did not feel that he had a reason to mourn Kang Pio, but at the same time, he was also unable to act as though the death meant absolutely nothing to him. All the feelings that were perhaps supposed to appear instead seemed to cancel one another out, leaving behind something so empty that even he struggled to recognize what was happening inside him.
Myeong-ro finally stopped talking when he realized Jongyo was not responding at all. He glanced at his friend again, noticing the pale face and empty gaze that had remained unchanged since earlier. But he no longer asked any questions. For the moment, he chose to let Jongyo sit quietly beside him while the car continued driving away from the busy city.
Jongyo leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes. His head still felt dizzy from the drinks he had consumed the night before, but this time he did not try to sleep. He only wanted to stop everything around him that kept moving, including Myeong-ro’s voice that could still occasionally be heard and the thoughts that never seemed to form into anything he could understand. There was no crying that finally broke through, no anger that exploded again, not even a desire to talk about Kang Pio any further.
Jongyo simply remained silent inside the car, letting the morning pass before him with a feeling he could not recognize at all. He had spent so much time hating someone, but when that person was truly no longer there, Jongyo simply did not know what to do with everything that remained inside him.