Chapter 71
The transition into the New Year was always a heavy, shifting tide for Sunghoon, but this year, trapped in the body of Haru, the weight was almost physical. It was a day that acted as a cruel mirror, reflecting everything he had lost while the rest of the world looked toward what they might gain.
Se-hee was always like this. She moved through life with a frantic, unpredictable energy that often left Haru trailing in her wake, exhausted yet unable to say no. Earlier that day, she had called him with a voice practically vibrating with excitement. She claimed she had found an "absolute gem" of a spot - a secluded, magical location perfect for a New Year's video .
Haru had resisted at first. The thought of venturing out into the freezing night when he could be curled up in the warmth of the apartment was loathsome. But Se-hee was nothing if not persistent. She had promised to handle all the logistics and even offered to pay for his transport, a bribe that, combined with her genuine enthusiasm, eventually wore him down. He had assumed, perhaps naively, that since she was filming "content," the place would be a popular lookout point or a trendy rooftop, bustling with the holiday crowd.
Now, as he walked down the deserted, narrowing path, he began to regret his compliance.
The air was jagged and sharp, a biting December chill that seemed to seep through the layers of his jacket and settle deep within his marrow. He pulled his shoulders up, hiding his freezing hands in his pockets, his fingers numbing against the fabric. The location she had sent was incredibly secluded, tucked away in an area of the city that felt forgotten by the modern neon sprawl of Seoul. Even the taxi driver had eventually refused to go any further, dropping him off at a dark intersection and leaving him to navigate the final stretch on foot.
She is always like this, he thought, a flicker of fond irritation crossing his mind. She always finds the hardest places to explore.
He checked his phone again, the screen's harsh white light blinding him momentarily. The blue dot was hovering exactly over the pinned location.
He had arrived.
But there was only darkness.
He looked around, his breath forming thick, ghostly plumes of mist in the freezing air.
The silence was profound, broken only by the distant, muffled sounds of the city below and the whistle of the wind through skeletal trees.
There were small structures - wooden traditional style parlors and pavilions - lining the area, but they were silent and skeletal. There were no decorations, no festive lights, no sign of Se-hee or the camera crew.
Haru felt a sudden, hollow ache in his chest. A part of him the cynical, tired part - had thought about just sleeping this day away. He had even harbored a dark, flickering thought that perhaps New Year's Eve would be the day he finally transitioned, the day the universe corrected its mistake and allowed him to disappear. It was a farfetched hope, he knew; surely if his soul were truly about to depart, he felt he would have sensed the tether fraying. Instead, the connection to this life felt stubbornly, painfully intact.
Today, more than any other day, he felt the weight of his stolen life. The date was a cruel reminder of the passage of time he wasn't supposed to witness. In the silence of the dark clearing, he could almost hear the phantom echoes of his 90s family - the laughter of his mother, the boisterous toasts of his colleagues. He regretted not being there. He regretted the distance of decades that no airplane could cross.
His memory was still a fragmented, foggy mess when it came to the exact mechanics of his fall. He knew he had died. He knew Sunghoon was gone. But every time his mind drifted toward the edge of that memory, a cold, visceral dread settled in the pit of his stomach, stopping him from looking too closely.
The isolation of the dark pavilion amplified his grief. He thought of his friends and his family, picturing their faces not as they were in his memories, but as they were in the reality he had researched online. He had seen the grainy digital photos of the crematorium from years ago. He knew the date. He knew that while the rest of the world was cheering for a new beginning, his family was likely submerged in a recurring cycle of mourning. Every year, on this night, they weren't celebrating a new year; they were marking the day their son had supposedly ended his life. The gnawing guilt of that reality - that he was here, breathing and warm, while they wept for a ghost - was a burden he didn't know how to carry.
He closed his eyes, leaning his head back, letting the cold numb his skin.
Suddenly, the world shifted.
Two arms wrapped around him from behind, the sudden contact jolting him out of his internal abyss. Before he could gasp or pull away, the entire area erupted into life.
As if by some orchestrated magic, strings of lights hidden along the roofs of the parlors and draped across the trees flickered on simultaneously. Warm, golden luminescence flooded the secluded spot, turning the dark, skeletal structures into a breathtaking, shimmering wonderland. The glow reflected off the frost-covered ground, making the world look as though it had been dipped in starlight.
Haru froze, his breath hitching in his throat. The transition from oppressive darkness to radiant beauty was so sudden it left him breathless. But it wasn't just the lights that stopped his heart.
It was the scent.
The unmistakable, grounding aroma of cedarwood filled his nostrils—a scent that had become part of his sanctuary in this confusing century. His body, which had been coiled tight with grief and cold, instinctively relaxed, melting back into the familiar, solid warmth of the person holding him.
The person behind him didn't speak immediately; they simply held him, their chest rising and falling against Haru's back, providing a physical anchor that pulled him back from the precipice of his thoughts.
"I missed you," a voice whispered against his ear. It was low, melodic, and thick with an honesty that bypassed all of Haru's defenses.
Haru let out a long, shaky sigh, his misted breath mingling with the golden light. The conflict in his soul reached a fever pitch. He had tried to stay away; he had tried to build a wall of silence and work, but the wall was crumbling under the weight of a single embrace.
"I… I missed you too," Haru whispered back. His voice was strained, vibrating with a fragility that made him feel like he was made of glass.
Why now?
The question screamed in his mind. He had thought he had more time. He had thought the distance of the tour would give him the space to settle the war inside himself. But here was Jae-wook, standing in the cold of a Seoul night, proving that there was no distance long enough to erase what had started.
The happiness he had felt for a fleeting second - the joy of seeing the lights and feeling the warmth - turned into a sharp, piercing dread. Tears began to prick at his eyes, hot and persistent, threatening to spill over and expose the wreckage of his heart.
"What are you doing here?" Haru asked, his voice cracking.
"I wanted to see you."
Raiven stepped around to face him. He stood under the glow of the hanging lights, looking like something out of a dream. He was flushed from the cold, his breath hitching slightly. He reached out, his hands gentle as he cupped Haru's face, forcing him to look up. Haru's own face was a bright blush of pink, partly from the biting December air and partly from the sheer intensity of the man in front of him.
"You look as beautiful as I remember," Raiven murmured. His eyes were dark and focused, showing a man who was utterly mesmerized, drowning in the sight of the person he had traveled across the world to find.His voice was hushed, as if he were afraid that speaking too loudly would shatter the moment.
Raiven didn't wait for a response. He leaned down, his lips engulfing Haru's in a soft, gentle, and lingering kiss. It was a kiss that carried the history of their messages, the tension of the live stream, and the ache of the miles between them. It was a silent testament to how much he had missed him.
Haru felt his resistance crumble. He let himself melt into the touch, his hands reaching up to find purchase on Raiven's coat, pulling him closer. As he deepened the kiss, the first tear finally escaped, falling warm and painful down his cold cheek.
Haru leaned into him, his tongue tracing Raiven's as the kiss grew more desperate, more demanding.
The contact provided the answer he had been terrified to admit even to himself. He didn't just like Raiven; he wanted to suffocate in this feeling. He wanted to lose himself in Raiven's lips, in his scent, in the way he made the world feel small and manageable.
But the guilt followed him even here. He liked him more than he could afford to. He knew, with a clarity that cut like a knife, that he wasn't yet the person Raiven thought he was. He wasn't at the place where he could accept this love without feeling like a fraud.
He wanted to love Raiven wholeheartedly - to love him as Haru, the man of this century - but to do that, he had to sort through the wreckage of Sunghoon. He had to do something hard. He had to reflect on the man who had died in 1991 so that the man alive in 2025 could truly exist.
He felt a wave of profound guilt. He was the one who had flown to Milan; he was the one who had asked for this. He had invited Raiven into this , and if he let things continue under these false pretenses, he would never be free of the weight in his chest.
A small, broken whimper escaped Haru's throat, vibrating against Raiven's lips. It was a sound of pure pain, a stark contrast to the beautiful, lit-up landscape around them. It was the sound of a looming heartbreak.
Raiven felt the shift. He started to pull back, his expression one of immediate concern, his eyes searching Haru's face for the source of the distress. But Haru wasn't ready to let go yet. He reached up, his fingers tangling into Raiven's hair, holding him there, urging him back into the kiss with a frantic intensity. He wanted to memorize this, to taste the sweetness one last time before the reality of his decision set in.
Despite the obvious hesitation he felt from Haru, Raiven complied. He continued to kiss him, his hands tightening around Haru's waist in a reassuring, caring grip. He was trying to anchor Haru, to tell him through touch that he was here, that he wasn't going anywhere.
Finally, the need for air forced them apart. Haru was hesitant, his hands lingering on Raiven's shoulders as if letting go meant disappearing back into the 90s. His eyes were red-rimmed and pained, the tears still falling steadily.
"Why are you crying? You might catch a cold," Raiven said softly. There was no judgment in his voice, only a deep, abiding affection. He reached out, removing one of his gloves to wipe away the tears with the pad of his thumb. The skin-on-skin contact was so gentle, so devastatingly kind, that it only served to break Haru further.
Haru let out a silent, racking sob, cursing himself for being so weak. He looked at Raiven, seeing the confusion and the brewing hurt in the other man's eyes.
"I don't deserve you," Haru whimpered, his voice barely audible over the wind. He looked into Raiven's eyes and felt the full weight of the person he was about to hurt. "I don't deserve any of this."