Chapter 66
The silence in the apartment wasn't the comfortable, companionable quiet they usually shared; it was a dense, airless thing that seemed to vibrate with the hum of the refrigerator. Se-hee sat across from Haru, her chopsticks hovering over her bowl of noodles. She kept stealing glances at him, her chest tight with a mix of frustration and genuine concern.
It had been days since the "incident"—the night she had burst into his room while the sound of his ragged, terrifying gasps for air had nearly driven her to call an ambulance. Since that night, Haru had become a ghost in his own home. He was physically present, sitting at their small table, but his spirit seemed to be lingering in a world she couldn't reach. He looked the way he had before the hospital incident months ago: withdrawn, his movements sluggish, his eyes vacant.
She watched him poke at a single noodle with a detached intensity, as if he were trying to solve a complex mathematical equation written in wheat and broth.
"So… anything interesting happen today?" Se-hee asked, her voice deliberately light, though she was practically vibrating with the urge to reach out and shake him back to reality.
Haru didn't look up. He just shook his head slowly, taking a microscopic bite of his food. He was hardly eating. He was lost in the internal cinema of his mind, a place where 1991 and 2026 were currently colliding in a violent wreck. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the crimson staining the dressing room floor; every time he opened them, he saw Raiven's face. The two images were becoming inseparable, a blurred photograph of a tragedy he was terrified of repeating.
Guilt was a physical weight on his chest. Whenever he talked to Raiven - hearing that cheerful, exhausted tone, the way Jae-wook would mumble "I miss you" between rehearsals - the weight doubled. He felt like a fraud.
He would spend hours after their short conversations just staring at the wall, dissecting every word he'd spoken. Did I sound too distant? Was that laugh forced? Did he notice the tremor in my voice? He was analyzing his own life as if it were a script he had lost the passion for, yet felt obligated to perform. He tried to be cheerful for Raiven's sake, but the idol had already started asking questions. "Haru-ya, is something wrong? You sound tired."
"Haru," Se-hee tried again, her voice firmer this time. "You're doing it again. You're staring at the wall.Talk to me."
Se-hee had tried everything. She'd invited him to join her for " her vlog on street food" B-roll filming, hoping the fresh air would clear the fog. He had agreed, trailing after her through markets like a dutiful shadow, but his spirit was clearly elsewhere. Even when she brought home the specific honey-glazed treats he'd started to favor, he'd just offer a pale, thin smile and set them aside.
Haru let out a long, shuddering sigh and set his chopsticks down. The clatter of the wood against the ceramic echoed in the quiet room. He looked at her, and for the first time in days, his eyes focused.
Haru knew he was failing her. He felt the weight of her worry like a physical burden on his shoulders, adding to the crushing guilt that already made every breath feel like a struggle.
"I am rethinking dating Raiven," he finally said.
The words didn't just fall into the air; they felt like a confession of a crime. As soon as he said it, he felt a momentary, treacherous surge of relief, as if a hand that had been squeezing his throat had loosened just an inch.
Se-hee froze, a strand of noodles halfway to her mouth. She recovered quickly, setting her bowl aside on the table and turning her body fully toward him, giving him her undivided, clinical attention. This was the opening she had been waiting for.
"Why is that?" she asked softly.
"It's not like we are seriously dating yet," Haru muttered, looking down at his pale hands. "We aren't even 'boyfriends' yet, according to that analogy you gave me."
"Is that how he sees it?" Se-hee asked pointedly while tilting her head.
Haru went silent. He pictured Raiven in that Milan hotel room - the way he had looked at Haru with a terrifying, open-hearted trust, the way he had practically worshipped Haru's body as if it were a holy relic. He realized with a jolt of cold dread that they probably weren't on the same page at all. Raiven was likely thousands of miles away, performing for tens of thousands of people, carrying the memory of them.
"Haru?" Se-hee called out, noticing the way his pupils had dilated as he zoned out again.
"I'm not sure," he murmured. He groaned, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. His hair, which had grown long enough to curl at the nape of his neck, was gripped tightly between his fingers.
Se-hee stood from her seat and moved to the chair beside him, placing a grounding hand on his shoulder. "What's going on? Are you getting second doubts? Cold feet? Because if it's just the fame thing, I am sure you two can figure something out."
"Its not that," he breathed into his palms.
"Don't you like him?"
"I do! I do!" Haru snapped his head up, his voice cracking with a sudden, desperate intensity. He looked at her with wide, haunted eyes before his shoulders slumped again.
He looked at Se-hee, his heart aching. To her, he was Haru, her best friend who had survived a tragedy. She didn't know he was Sunghoon - a man who had already walked this path and left a trail of broken promises behind him. How could he explain that he had approached Raiven for the wrong reasons? How could he tell her that every time he looked at him he saw a ghost from 1991?
Raiven was a shining star, yes, but he was dulled by that specific look in his eyes - the terminal exhaustion of a soul that had been used up by the industry. It was the same look Yeon-woo had worn.
Haru didn't want to have a savior complex. He knew the "fairytale" of saving everyone was a lie. But the parallels were too sharp. He had failed to save Yeon-woo; he had been too late, too caught up in his own rising fame to see the shadow swallowing his friend. And now, he had deflected those decades of repressed grief and guilt onto Jae-wook. He was using a living man to settle a score with a dead one.
"I think I asked him to date me for the wrong reasons," he whispered, his eyes turning distant and glassy.
Se-hee sat silently, processing the weight of his words. She was a creator, someone who lived in stories, and she could sense the epic proportions of the conflict he was hiding.
"Could you… explain that to me?" she asked cautiously.
Haru let out a long, ragged sigh. "I used to like someone… a long time ago. Something terrible happened to him. When I saw Raiven for the first time, he reminded me of him so much that it felt lik... And I think…" his voice trailed off in defeat.
"You think you entered this relationship with that person in mind," she concluded for him.
Haru nodded, a single, sharp movement.
Se-hee sat back, leaning her elbows on her knees as she thought. This was far beyond anything she has ever delt with.This was deep-seated psychological response. "I honestly don't know what to tell you, Haru. This is a tough situation. It's messy."
She paused, her eyes suddenly lighting up as a thought struck her. "Wait. When you were in Milan… when you kissed him. What did you feel?"
"It felt… it felt great," Haru admitted, the memory of Raiven's touch sending a ghost of a shiver down his spine. "It felt like I was finally breathing for the first time."
"Then there is your answer," she said firmly.
"It's not as simple as that!" Haru stood up abruptly, pacing the small living room. "My feelings for him are a tangled mess. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I'm using him. I'm trying to 'save' him because I couldn't save the other one. Is that love? Or is that just an obsession with fixing the past?"
"You went all the way to Italy, Haru. You told him you wanted to be with him."
"Maybe that was something I just wish I had done before!" he said his voice filling with pain at each word, then immediately winced. He lowered his voice, trembling. "Maybe I'm just trying to give a happy ending to a story that ended in a tragedy."
Se-hee let out a long, weary sigh. She stood up and walked over to him, taking his hands in hers. Her grip was steady, the only thing keeping him from spinning off into another panic attack.
"Listen to me," she said, her voice dropping into a serious, sisterly tone. "You know I love you, Haru. You are my family. But if you truly feel this way… if you feel like you are leading him on or that your feelings are just a reflection of someone else… it's better to break things off now."
Haru looked at her, his chest aching.
"Before you put any labels on it," she continued. "Before you get any more attached. If you keep going while feeling like this, you won't just hurt yourself. You'll hurt him too."
He looked at his phone, lying silent on the table. He knew she was right. He was standing at a crossroads: he could either retreat into the safety of his guilt and end it, or he could try to find where the ghost ended and where Jae-wook began - two difficult decidions that suddenly felt like a burden. But as he looked at his trembling hands, he wasn't sure he had the strength to do either.
The silence returned, but this time, it was heavier.
"I don't know if I can do it," he whispered. His voice broken.